Society Toolkit
Using a Film Still to Publicize a Screening
Where publicity images come from for a repertory screening, what editorial use allows, and what changes when a still moves to a poster or merchandise.
Yes, a film society can use a still to publicize a screening, but the answer depends on where the image came from and what the society does with it. A still supplied by the rights holder or a distributor for press use is there to be used in editorial contexts; the same frame printed on a paid poster or a tote bag crosses into territory that needs a different permission.
The confusion is common because the word publicity covers two different acts. Telling the audience what is screening and when is editorial use, close to what a newspaper does when it illustrates a review. Selling an image, or using it to sell something else, is commercial use, and the rules change.
Where do film societies get publicity images?
A film society gets publicity images from the same places the press does. Distributors and rights holders maintain press kits and stills galleries for titles they license, and a booking that includes promotional material usually means the society may use the supplied stills to announce that title. The safe habit is to ask for the stills when the print or file is booked and to keep the answer with the booking papers.
Program notes and newsletters that discuss a film can also rely on a narrow editorial allowance in some situations, but the allowance is a defence, not a license, which is why supplied stills are always the easier path. The society that wants certainty uses what the rights holder sent.
When does using a film still count as editorial use?
A still counts as editorial use when it illustrates information or criticism rather than sells a product. A screening listing, a program note, a review or a newsletter entry that names the film and shows the still to identify it sits on the editorial side of the line in ordinary practice, because the image accompanies text that informs.
The boundary is the same one picture libraries draw for their buyers. The Rights Desk, a United Kingdom guide to picture licensing, devotes a shelf to editorial versus commercial use, including what a buyer's fee actually covers, where advertising crosses the line, and why merchandise is a different license entirely. Reading that boundary once saves a committee years of guessing, because the distinction between informing and selling does not change from one still to the next.
Territory and duration matter as well. An editorial license tied to a season or a region should not be stretched into permanent decoration for the hall, and a still used beyond its licensed window is a problem even if the use stays editorial.
What changes when a still goes on a poster or merchandise?
When a still leaves the listing and goes on a paid poster, a flyer sold for funds, a mug or a t-shirt, the use stops being purely editorial. The image is now part of a product or an advertisement, and the rights question shifts from fair comment to licensing, releases and sometimes the separate rights of the actors whose faces appear in the frame.
Posters and flyers posted free at the library sit closest to the line. A flyer that announces a screening is still informing, and common practice treats it as editorial, but a committee that sells the poster, bundles it with admission or prints it on something for sale has stepped over. The question to ask is always what the audience is paying for: the film, or the picture.
The practical rule for a small society is to keep stills where they inform: the season page, the program, the newsletter, the listing sent to the local paper. For anything decorative or sold, the committee should either license the image properly or commission original artwork, which is what many societies do anyway because an original poster is also better publicity. A hall that wants a visual record of its own, rather than borrowed frames, can commission its own photography, and the notes on photographing the hall for the record cover how to brief that shoot.
Keeping the paper trail with the booking
The tidy habit is to file image permissions where the booking lives. A single folder per title holding the booking confirmation, the license line, the supplied stills and the email that says how they may be used means the next programmer does not have to re-ask the question. The same folder logic that keeps print and DCP bookings traceable keeps the stills traceable too.
The United States Copyright Office explains what copyright protects and how permission works, and its pages on what copyright is and what it covers are the plain federal reference for any committee weighing an image use. When a question goes beyond a supplied still, the committee reads the license it actually holds rather than the rule it half remembers.