- Music
- 10 Jun 16
Independent filmmaker, Matthew Fulks, is alleging a conduct of plagiarism taken from his film Palinoia has occured.
Fulks is suing Beyoncé as he believes that she and her creative team used elements of his film for the visual album Lemonade without his permission.
The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday. In it, Fulks claims that whilst conceptualizing Lemonade the creative team referred to his film Palinoia and lifted aspects from it and put them directly into the HBO trailer.
Fulks argues that in July of 2015, he sent this short film to Beyoncé's creative team in the hopes that it may lead to them working together on a music video. Nothing came of it but filming for Lemonade commenced later that year.
The lawsuit reads; “Both the Palnioia Work and the Lemonade trailer are comprised of short visual and audio segments arranged in montage fashion, with certain segments recurring throughout the works.” It cites in particular the shared use of “images of the central character in a state of distress,” “hand-painted graffiti words in similar styles,” “red persons with eyes obscured,” “garages with repeating ceiling light fixtures and columns with the lower halves of the columns painted yellow,” and “overgrown grass”.
There is most definitely a strong resemblance between the ambiance and style of both trailers. A harsh juxtaposition of images and sounds and a narrator reciting poetry over a troubled relationship. Fulks is seeking profits from Lemonade's sales for the plagiarism of his work.