While throngs of movie lovers trooped to cinemas over the holidays to enjoy glitzy, fantastical movie offerings via the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), a few amused themselves by watching a digital video disc or DVD that contains images more gory than phantasmagoric.

More realistic and bloodier than any of the entries in this year’s MMFF, the DVD, bluntly titled “The Ampatuan Massacre Live,” contains footage of the retrieval of the bodies of the massacre victims in Maguindanao.

Getting wind of its proliferation both in Manila and Cotobato City, members of the Optical Media Board (OMB) swooped down on vendors who sell the pirated CDs in Quiapo, Manila.

OMB chairman Ronnie Ricketts said the discs were selling briskly at 70 to 100 pesos apiece.

“We were able to monitor [the DVD’s] proliferation through our intel. The copies were being sold underground…meaning, they were being sold very discreetly, very quietly, bangketa-style…sell and run.”

Ricketts admits he has no idea where the copy emanates.

“The copy is really clear, really good…[but] I don’t know how they were able to get it or from where.”

Members of the National Press Club (NPC), who were present during the raid, said they received information about the existence of the discs through the victims’ family.

“We received calls from the families about this,” shared Benny Antiporda, NPC president. “We acted based on that concern.”

He continued: "This is really very sad. People trying to make money out of this gruesome incident…it’s adding insult to injury. Imagine how the victim’s family would feel…they are making money out of the gruesome fate suffered by our fellow journalists.”

Antiporda, as with Ricketts, appealed to the public to not patronize the DVD.

“We should have compassion…we should be more sensitive,” Antiporda quipped.

The Heirs of 11/23 Maguindanao Heroes, an organization comprising the families of the massacre victims, also expressed anguish over the production of the discs.

“They should respect us, particularly our children who are still in trauma because of the incident. If the children watch the DVDs, especially the little ones, they will be more traumatized,” the group’s vice-chairman Police Officer 1 Eliver Cablitas, whose wife is among those who died in the massacre, told a newspaper.

The group also appealed to the media to stop saying where and how the public can obtain the discs.

“Be responsible. If you want to write something, make it worthy. Don’t be an avenue of those people who made those DVDs to promote their illegal goods because it does not help the situation. Please stop convincing the families to buy a copy of it. Do not make us think that you are also profiting from the discs,” Cablitas said.

But some vendors remain unyielding.

“Well, personally, I think people should be able to watch this so they would know.

“[And] why pick on us? We’re not to blame...not the ones who conducted the murder,” reasoned one in Filipino.

Another vendor verbalized their motive for selling the CDs in calloused terms.

“We’re just trying to earn some money here.”