Before I get started, no Paul Verhoeven's Show Girls and its affiliated properties are not PD media, they're all intact on the copyright front. Something to keep in mind the next time someone tries to tell you only trash is public domain.
I stumbled upon an interesting story on r/lostmedia about another sequel to the infamous flop Showgirls, if you're not familiar with the other slightly more well known sequel which is either called Pennies from Heaven or just Showgirls 2, this was concerning a totally different even more obscure film.
The sequel that was the focus of the post is called Showgirls Exposed/Showgirls 2 the Story of Hope, which is not to be confused with the later re-release of the original film, which is called Showgirls Fully Exposed. It is a strange story, but the film is real and there is a trailer for it online which can be watched online. Here's where copyright rears its ugly head, the film was produced in the 2000s-2010s but could only be seen in the United States of America, why you ask? Well, the film includes scenes from a little movie called The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Why is footage from a 1919 film an obstacle to wider releases? Because in addition to being old, it's also German. Germany like most of the world uses a life plus system, in their case 70 years after death of creators. That meant that at the time of the film's release Caligari's rights were still owned by the Murnau Foundation, an organisation setup by the West German Government in 1966 to preserve and restore classic German cinema, it has since earned a reputation for censorship and abuse of copyright to control and limit the use of classic German cinema. The director and most of the backers for Showgirls Exposed are themselves German, so this is a bit of an odd oversight to say the least.
So, despite being a German production the film could only be released in one market, the United States which is still using a date of release system despite passing a law to overhaul US copyright to reflect the "normal" international version in the 1970s. Add to that SEO complications and competition from other related projects, and you have a perfect recipe for crippling obscurity.
But I have some good news! In Germany, copyright of motion pictures is determined by the Director, scriptwriter, dialogue writer and composer of original music for the film.
With respect to cinematographic works, the term of protection is the life and 70 years after the death of the longest surviving of a group of authors consisting of the main director, the author of the film script, the author of the dialogue, and the composer of any music created for the film.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5a9f6b59-1014-4d39-a4f0-7f83bb4428f9
And the director of Caligari Robert Wiene died in 1938 and the scriptwriters Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz perished in 1944 and 1954 respectively. And as a silent movie, it had no credited composer. This means that by January next year the film will be in the public domain in Germany and possibly already is depending on whether Mayer was principle scriptwriter, the information I could find listed both as co-writers with no distinguishing between them. So, if Marc Vorlander, the director of Showgirls Exposed, is still active, perhaps the new year will finally bring some much-needed appreciation to his masterpiece. Time will tell, I guess.
