The fight between the great director Mark Rappaport (Local Color, From The Journals Of Jean Seberg) and Boston University film scholar/Cassavetes specialist Ray Carney has its origins in 2005, when the filmmaker entrusted copies of his movies to the professor. In 2012, Rappaport went public with the troubling contention that Carney refused to return his work, effectively making it impossible for the director to earn any revenue from exhibiting the films. As Rappaport wrote last year, “the chances of anyone or any organization either having the interest, inclination, and, even more importantly, the cash to go through the very expensive […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 16, 2014So, it took Ray Carney 11 months to respond to Mark Rappaport’s allegations (we published parts of Carney’s open letter earlier this week), but no time at all for Rappaport to fire back at the Boston University professor. Here’s what Rappaport had to say: Everyone seems to be so concerned about Carney’s side of the story. All well and good. It took him over 11 months to come up with a letter filled more with hot air than with information—mostly about how everyone is treating him badly, and especially me, who has unfairly, it seems, spreading lies about him on […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 20, 2013In the current Winter issue of Filmmaker, Scott wrote a piece on the sad situation that has developed in which Ray Carney, who was entrusted with prints of many of experimental director Mark Rappaport’s films, is refusing to return the materials to the Paris-based auteur. Carney, who has positioned himself as the foremost John Cassavetes expert, is a professor at Boston University, and Rappaport recently appealed to the academic institution to pressure Carney to give him back his life’s work. Last week, though, Rappaport reached out over email and informed me, “The unhappy update of all of this is that Boston University washed their […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 11, 2013It’s easy to imagine movies now as mutable data shuffled endlessly between clouds and hard drives — and for some movies, this is at least sort of the case. But the enduring value of original physical media — prints, expensive video masters and even physical screenplays — is being demonstrated in a dispute that is roiling the experimental film and video world. For the last two years, filmmaker Mark Rappaport has been unsuccessfully attempting — via private correspondence, public pleas and a court case — to retrieve needed archival materials he left for safekeeping with film critic and Boston University […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 17, 2013