Sponsors

Debate Team has only been made possible by the support of key donors and sponsors.

SF Film Society

We are supported by the San Francisco Film Society, one of the nation's most important nonprofit foundations for the advancement of independent film making. The Film Society provides Debate Team with fiscal sponsorship, meaning that anyone, even you, can make a fully tax deductible donation to Debate Team. This film has been a labor of love, and like many independent film projects, still runs deeply in the red. If you like this film and want to support independent movie making consider donating money to the cause.

Stanford Law

We are also grateful for the support of the Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project and Documentary Film Program, located in the school's Center for Internet and Society. Julie Ahrens and other attorneys at the Documentary Film Program reviewed Debate Team to make sure that all unlicensed third-party material (photos, video, audio recordings, music, etc.) were utilized in a way that complied with the Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, authored by the intellectual property scholars at American University. This means that, to the best of their understanding, any use of unlicensed copyright material in Debate Team is made under the protection of the fair use doctrine. What's the fair use doctrine? As the American University website says,

Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. Fair use enables the creation of new culture, and keeps current copyright holders from being private censors.

Stanford Law provided this service to the film entirely pro bono. And although I am a Berkeley alum, I have to give Stanford, the Documentary Film Program, Julie Ahrens and the other attorneys working at the Program mad props for stepping out from behind the theory and abstraction that law schools are so well known for, and providing an invaluable service to the people who make under-funded documentaries.

IndieGoGo

Debate Team is also sponsored by IndieGoGo, a social networking and fundraising website for filmmakers. Slava Rubin and the other founders of IndieGoGo have also been tremendously helpful in helping us navigate the often confusing and sometimes treacherous waters of film distribution. In contravention to the old methods and systems of distribution that often required filmmakers to give up nearly all of their copyright rights in exchange for a meager cut of profits, IndieGoGo has helped us to develop a more sophisticated hybrid distribution strategy that keeps revenues with the filmmaker--resulting in better odds of our breaking even. Go IndieGoGo!