Shakespeare was a copycat and Picasso stole—your 'unoriginal' anxiety just got scientifically vindicated.
Season 1 • Episode 3
LatestShakespeare copied. Mozart copied. Picasso copied too. We're obsessed with originality. But we're slowly destroying the very creativity we want to protect. "Good artists copy, bad artists steal" was stolen by a lot of people. This is the last video in our three-part series.
A 3-chapter documentary about the stories we tell ourselves around creativity. Using a plethora of studies from anthropology, psychology and neuroscience, the film tries to demystify the way we use our brains to create, to make art and science. The products of our minds are extraordinary, but the process in which they are brought about are in fact, quite ordinary. Shakespeare copied. Mozart copied. Picasso copied too. But we're still obsessed with originality. We're living in the most creative time in humanity's existence, so maybe it's time to rethink our preconceptions about creativity.
Writing
Script treats you like an adult who can handle cognitive dissonance.
Direction
Visual metaphors for brain processes that actually clarify, not confuse.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 'copyleft' keyword hints at the film's unstated politics: it implicitly argues current IP law is a historical accident protecting capital, not creators.
Released in 2018, this predated TikTok's explosion—making its 'we live in the most creative time' claim almost prophetically ironic given the platform's remix-native culture.
US
