MATTHEW FULKS, A Louisville-based filmmaker you probably have not heard of, is suing Beyoncé, a pop singer you probably have heard of, for copyright infringement. Fulks says the trailer for Bey’s recent Lemonade copies visual and sonic elements from his short film Palinoia. Watch both, and you’ll see the two films definitely share thematic and compositional elements. Copyright infringement, however, isn’t that simple. When it comes to matters of creativity—film, design, fashion, architecture—it can be next to impossible to distinguish theft from influence.
Palinoia, which Fulks made in 2014, opens with a man in a suit sitting in a red-lit room with a goggle-like contraption over his eyes. In the video for “6 Inch,” a track that shows up about halfway through Lemonade, you see Bey, bathed in red light, in the reflection of a rearview mirror. The way it’s shot, the mirror black-bars her eyes.