By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 14
TALA will only take work the submitter owns. A simple rule quietly forces a rights conversation many creators skip.
Buried in the TALA submission terms is a sentence with more weight than it appears to carry: entrants may only submit content they own. When the festival opened its digital call in March 2021, it made ownership the price of entry, and in a sector where rights are often loosely held, that is a small act of formalisation.
The requirement matters because copyright in Namibia is automatic but frequently unexamined. Many creators have never had to prove who holds a work until a platform asks them to click a box that says they do.
Copyright without a form to fill
Namibia protects original works under the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act of 1994, and protection arises the moment a qualifying work is made, with no registration required. A film, a music video or a sketch is covered on creation, which is a strength and a trap: rights exist, but so does the assumption that they need no attention.
A submission gate that demands ownership turns that abstract right into a concrete claim. To enter, a creator has to know, and assert, that the work is theirs to offer.
Automatic copyright protects the work and quietly lets the owner forget they will one day have to prove it.
The commissioned-film catch
The Act carries a rule that trips up first-time filmmakers: where a film is commissioned for payment, the commissioner, not the maker, owns the copyright unless the two agree otherwise. A director who shot a music video or a corporate piece to order may not hold the rights they assume they do, and a festival ownership clause is exactly where that surfaces.
For the creative economy this is a useful discipline. A platform that asks who owns the upload nudges makers to settle authorship on paper before, not after, a dispute.
The person who paid for the film may own it; the ownership box is where that is discovered.
Where BIPA fits the picture
Registration is not required for copyright to exist, but the Business and Intellectual Property Authority offers a route to record rights and manage related marks. For a creator building a catalogue they intend to license, a documented chain of ownership through BIPA turns an assumed right into an asset a buyer or a broadcaster can trust.
That is the brand dimension. A film with clean, provable title is easier to sell, syndicate or defend than one whose ownership rests on memory and goodwill.
A right you can document is an asset; a right you merely assume is a risk.
Exhibition is not assignment
A festival that hosts a work online raises a fair question for cautious owners: what rights am I granting by uploading. Submitting for exhibition should not mean handing over copyright, and creators entering any platform do well to read whether they are licensing a screening or signing away the work. TALA’s own insistence on ownership cuts both ways, implying the maker keeps what they bring.
The prudent reading is narrow. Grant the least a platform needs to show the film, keep the rest, and put the terms in writing before the work goes up.
Show the work without surrendering it; a screening licence is not a sale.
For a filmmaker, a producer or a rights adviser, TALA’s ownership clause is a small prompt with a large lesson: Namibian screen work is protected the moment it is made, but only useful commercially when its ownership is clear and documented. The decision each entrant faces is whether to treat the submission box as a formality or as the moment to finally settle who owns the film.
Sources: The Namibian; BIPA – Business and Intellectual Property Authority; Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Protection Act 1994 (WIPO Lex)
