ANALYSIS: Piracy thrives where Filipino cinema stays inaccessible

Lav Diaz calls piracy a cultural revolution.

Piracy is illegal, but for many Filipinos, it has also been one of the few ways they have watched films by Filipino auteur Lav Diaz.

As discussions around Diaz resurfaced on X, the conversation shifted from his famously long films to a bigger question: Who can actually access Filipino cinema?

While filmmakers like Albert Serra have praised Diaz’s creative freedom and collaboration with Filipino actors, audiences pointed out that finding and watching his works remains a challenge.

Alongside discussions about his filmmaking, netizens revisited Diaz’s past comments on film piracy. In the 2020 book “Conversations with Lav Diaz” by Michael Guarneri, the filmmaker said piracy contributed to the low price of DVDs in the Philippines.

“Personally, I am not against piracy. Piracy is part of the cultural revolution in our country,” Diaz said.

His remarks resurfaced amid ongoing concerns over media accessibility. A 2024 consumer survey estimated that 58% to 70% of Filipinos consume pirated media, placing the Philippines among the highest in the Asia-Pacific region.

“That’s why I love the pirates,” Diaz told Guarneri. “They are more into cultural revolution than the people in the academy or the status quo critics in the country.”

For some Filipinos, piracy has long been tied to how they discovered films, from DVDs bought on the streets to files shared through flash drives. When there are new movies in cinemas, many tend to joke, “Aabangan ko na lang sa DVD ‘yan.”

However, piracy remains illegal. Yet at the time, there is wa tension between protecting creators’ rights and ensuring that culturally significant works remain accessible to audiences.

That frustration also extends to Filipino films beyond Diaz’s work. Some users questioned why many Cinemalaya entries remain difficult to find online.

“Why are Cinemalaya entries locked and buried deep, god knows where, never to be seen again? Hmm, not very malaya huh,” one X user said.

Another user claimed that 70 of the 162 Cinemalaya films, from 2005 to 2024, cannot be found online: “I wouldn’t be surprised if a good chunk of it is now lost media.”

The v has since worked on archiving and digitizing Cinemalaya films and Gawad Alternatibo titles to preserve and expand access to local works.

The debate around Diaz’s films ultimately reflects a larger challenge for Philippine cinema: audiences cannot support films they cannot easily watch.

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