VOLUME 18: PIRATES!
Something unspoken lies underneath the whole of cinephilia. Well, not exactly unspoken. In fact, we talk about it all the time when we’re soliciting full director filmographies on Twitter, when we’re noting down streaming dates on services we have no intention of subscribing to, and when we faux-ironically whine about not getting a KG invite. But because of the tightly interwoven relationship between publications and public relations there is seldom space to write about piracy frankly, despite it defining our access to film in such a meaningful way; I imagine the vast majority of people reading this have seen more movies this year pirated than in the theatre.
Luckily, Cinema Year Zero has no such relationships, so we can dedicate a whole issue to piracy. Any bridges that it might have burnt have long since been cindered. The same cannot be said for our contributors, some of whom are normal, functioning members of society, hence their names have been anonymised.
But this taboo on piracy is gossamer thin. Like so much in this horrible age, it is a structuring presence that we are supposed to act like we do not see; cinephiles are expected to perform its non-existence while reaping the benefits and accepting the losses. Even at a glamorous film festival like Locarno, in the depths of the film industry, you need only look over someone’s shoulder, or ask a few gently probing questions, to uncover its presence.
And if you can’t afford to attend these events that only seem to be profitable for Campari, while everyone else survives off of familial wealth or their ever-growing overdraft, then the only way to see many of the movies playing at them is through piracy. Especially if you live outside of a ‘major city’. But this is really the way audiences are built now; it’s hard to imagine the imminent Hong Sang-soo retrospective at the ICA in London without the cult of devotees built through shared files, often ripped from screeners by pirates brave enough to risk their careers to become a hero to these select few.
In the depths of these hoarders and freebooters lies rarefilmm.com, which calls itself a “cave of forgotten films”, and is, unsurprisingly, one of the most obsessive in their looting of oddities and artefacts, carried out with a heroic sense of self-importance. And, indeed, the site is probably the only place you can find much esoterica. But after the only Palestinian film to play at Berlinale this year, No Other Land (2024), directed by a collective of Palestinain & Israeli filmmakers, stalled in landing US distribution, Jon W., the man behind rarefilmm, boldly declared “Fuck distributors, you’re on the internet, distribute it yourself”. This was obviously controversial, not least as No Other Land has received deals elsewhere and is still very much amidst its festival run. Twitter fights broke out, someone called someone else the r-word, so it goes. After a few quote tweets, filled with fighting words against his detractors, the punchline came. Only a few hours after its involuntary distribution, rarefilmm tweeted: “Film has been removed now as per request of the director”.
But of course, the lines are usually more blurred. The relationship between piracy and the Global South is particularly complex: far from the interest (or prying eyes) of the major Hollywood studios, piracy is an even more central part of the way films are seen, and is, often, the only way their homegrown film can be seen by an outside audience, far from regular distribution and any compensation at all. Hopefully they’ll get a retrospective at the BFI when they catch up to the pirates in a decade or two.
These, among others, are some of the ideas explored across the six essays in this issue:
KAT pitches piracy as a way to liberate ourselves from the profit-driven logic of the major studios.
BEN finds parity between the aesthetics of the cam-rip and oeuvre of Shawn Levy.
ALONSO charts the freedoms and limitations of a pirate’s life in Central America.
In this issue piracy is understood not as a moral issue in and of itself, but as something deeply embedded in the global film industry; as something roughly strapped to the broken hull of an already sinking ship. Sometimes it feels genuinely exciting and exploratory, like discovering an island not yet charted, and sometimes you’re joylessly watching a cam-rip of Deadpool and Wolverine (2024) on your phone.
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