In September 2010, The Asylum will be a guest at the Incubate Festival in Tilburg. The American company has become notorious in recent years for making their so-called mockbusters,

cheap pirated versions of major Hollywood films.

These mockbusters are immediately released on DVD, even before the

original movies screen in cinemas. Besides a large number of claims and lawsuits, the studio also enjoys a large fan base.

The Asylum’s way of working fits perfectly with the central theme of this year’s Incubate; piracy in the arts. Besides various readings and discussions on the subject, Incubate has also compiled a very diverse film program around this theme under the title ‘Pirate Cinema‘.

Watch an interview we did with David Rimawi (Sales and Distribution at The Asylum) on their company, there method of production, business model and piracy below:

During the festival week visitors can enjoy the pirated counterparts of The Da Vinci Code, Snakes on a Plane, Transformers and Alien vs. Predator among others. One of the highlights is the European movie premiere of Titanic II. The film premieres in the U.S. on August 24 and will be featured in a cinema in Europe for the first time during the Incubate festival on Thursday, September 16.

All screenings take place in the Filmfoyer Tilburg and are free. Check out the whole Pirate Cinema program at www.incubate.org/2010/event/19

“Seriously I thought it was a spoof when i saw it at the rental store”
“it was hilarious in the stupidest way, Don’t BUY JUST RENT“
“This movie is way more fun than the movie that it obviously rips off”
(user reviews imdb.com)

Piracy in the arts is the overarching theme of Incubate 2010. This theme is visible throughout all different parts of the festival program and will be especially investigated at

the Pirate Conference on Friday September 17. Tickets for the conference are sold seperately from the festival tickets through incubate-innovation.org and you determine the ticket price. Arrr!

Here’s an interesting talk we found on Ted.com by Johanna Blakley. Blakley is the Deputy Director of the Norman Lear Center (a media-focused think tank at the University of Southern California) where she spends much of her time exploring the impact of intellectual property rights on innovation and the ownership of creative content. In this speech Johanna explains how the fashion industry actually benefits from the lack of copyrights in terms of not only creativity but, in the end, even sales as well. She therefore suggests that other creative industries should take an

example from fashion by incorporating the fashion industry’s copyrightless way of working and then create their own model from there.