Talk to Me: Cinema in Malaysia and Indonesia in 2015

 
As usual, it is difficult to rely 100 per cent on statistics. Indeed, Indonesia remains without an institution or state agency that regulates and backs the film industry. Despite constant requests from producers and filmmakers, and many promises made by politicians, concrete steps in this direction are yet to be taken. What we can state with certainty is that, thanks to Korean theatre owners CJ and Lotte entering the market there, the number of screens and the quality of structures and projections in the archipelago are progressively improving.

 The geographical issue of the country makes a capillary penetration to the various islands difficult, but the integration of cinemas into shopping centres (as is the case in the all of Asia, new malls are springing up all over the place) makes managing them far easier. 

Another problem for those wishing to fill the seats in Indonesian cinemas is the pervasive phenomenon of piracy. In Indonesia, DVD shops and market stalls – which are still the most common way to enjoy home videos – mainly sell pirated copies. Strangely enough, only local films are sold in the original language, but they are then pirated on YouTube. 

This though, at least in theory, guarantees a natural life for the film in the Indonesian theatres, while American ones are often available in pirated versions even before their legitimate release. Despite this, for some years, the Indonesian public has shown growing signs of indifference to them in comparison to local productions. This was particularly true in the first half of 2015, the period in which local films had a hard time achieving satisfactory results at the box office.
The biggest hit of the first half of the year, the drama Di Balik 98, the feature film debut of the noted actor Lukman Sardi, didn’t even sell 700,000 tickets, and none of the other approximately sixty films released between January and June reached a quota of 500,000 tickets sold. 

Despite the above-mentioned structural problems, considering that Indonesia has a population of over 200 million, we can understand why alarm bells were ringing in the Indonesian film industry.

Fortunately, during the religious festival of Eid al-Fitr, in July, two very different local productions managed to strike a chord with the public and sell over a million tickets: the religious drama based on a polygamy story Surga yang Dirindukan by Kuntz Agus (as is the norm for films of this genre, it is an adaptation of a best-selling novel) and the action comedy Comic 8: Casino Kings by Anggy Umbara.

 In August and September, decent results were also obtained by Magic Hour by Asep Kusdimar (more than 800,000 tickets) and the comedy 3 Dara by Ardy Octaviand, a story of three friends and their relationships with women (more than 600,000 spectators).

But this is where the list of home productions that surpassed the half-a-million spectator mark ends, out of over a hundred releases. In the face of such results, a quantitative downturn for 2016 was expected; a trend that was already taking shape in the second half of 2015. But then the film Single – by the enfant prodige Raditya Dika – was released on 17 December, filling a million seats by 1 January 2016.

 The other important statistic registered in 2015 was strong signs of a generational renewal. With regards to commercial cinema, while new and relatively new names were behind some of the biggest hits, films made by established names like Hanung Bramantyo (Hijab) and Rizal Mantovani (Wewe) had a hard time making an impact. In terms of official recognition, confirmation came in the form of nominations and awards at the Festival Filem Indonesia, where three of the five films in the Best Film category (Siti, A Copy of My Mind and Mencari Hilal) and four of the directors competing (Eddie Cahyono for Siti, Joko Anwar for A Copy of My Mind, Ismail Besbeth for Mencari Hilal and Angga Dwimas Sasongko for Filosofi Kopi) hail from more independent and innovative fields in local production.

The victory of Siti (seen at last year’s FEFF) as Best Film and of Joko Anwar as Best Director gave a shot in the arm to the more creative component of local filmmaking. A Copy of My Mind deserves further discussion, as it was the first Indonesian production that Korean company CJ directly participated in. The entrance of Korean majors into the Indonesian market, first as film theatre owners and now as producers, was seen by many as injecting vitality into the industry.

Although A Copy of My Mind was not a major box-office success, the fact that it was the first Indonesian film in almost 10 years to be selected by both the Venice and Toronto film festivals gave enormous visibility to the director (who was also bringing the ambitious HBO-produced series Asia Halfworlds onto the small screen) and to a working relationship that promises further interesting results. In terms of box-office results, things are not looking any better in Malaysia.
On the contrary. While it is true that in 2015 local productions saw their record high in terms of takings, thanks to the action film Polis Evo by Ghaz Abu Bakar, which with its 17.47 million broke the previous record set by The Journey (17.17), we must also point out that this title alone was responsible for almost a third of the entire year’s takings from homegrown films. The 80 films officially released in 2015 (one less than 2014) brought only 4.5 million spectators to the cinema. This is the lowest figure since 2007. Bear in mind that the total number of cinema-goers had increased from 62 million in 2014 to over 68 million in 2015.

 

The major beneficiaries of this increase were English-language productions (+8.78 per cent in terms of public, +12.27 per cent in earnings), Chinese-language films (+23.10 per cent public, +29.32 per cent earnings) and Indian-language films (+91.18 per cent public, +101.19 per cent earnings – the best result for Indian films for at least a decade) – but not Indonesian ones, which in the past 10 years have earned a figure of between one to four per cent of the Malaysian total box-office takings. In gradual decline in the past five years, they have all but disappeared from the screens.
Malaysian films have seen a devastating downturn in spectators and earnings, a drop of 31 per cent and 28.9 per cent respectively.

 A negative trend that we have been analyzing since 2011, the year of greatest success for the local industry, but which saw a brisk acceleration last year. An even more disturbing sign, in the face of global expansion of the local market without a lessening of the number of local productions is, if we exclude the takings from Polis Evo, the remaining 79 Malaysian films released in 2015 earned around 450,000 ringgit each (€100,000 or US$115,000).

And we can see how the public’s disillusionment has grown over the year. Polis Evo aside, only four homegrown films earned more than 2 million ringgit a piece (around €450,000 or US$500,000); the horror flick Villa Nabila (2,808,000 MYR), the comedy Suamiki Encik Perfect 10 (2,986,000 MYR), the Lunar New Year film My Papa Rich (3,025,000 MYR) and the sequel/reboot of the comic sci-fi series Cicakman 3 (2,556,000 MYR).
A quartet of titles were released between January and March. After March, only four films earned more than a million ringgit, Polis Evo included. It is almost as though the latter satiated the hunger for local films, leaving all the other with, literally, the crumbs. In the end, the terrible quality of local productions was not the only thing under scrutiny in 2015 (this was the bull in the china shop that everyone chose to ignore).

 
The system of wajib tayang – the obligatory programming of homegrown films on the screen for at least two weeks – fell foul of the industry. It is a protectionist system which gives visibility and respite to local films, but which is now accused of fomenting laziness and lack of creativity, allowing the industry to just sit back and rely on this scheme.

 The FINAS (the national corporation for Malaysian cinema) announced at the start of 2016 that there would be a revision of this system. But it is not yet clear how the new measure will encourage creativity within the industry. In addition, despite being a huge hit, Polis Evo itself is emblematic: a high-budget production with actors of note (Shaheizy Sam and Zizan Razak), it provides adequate entertainment value, but is derivative in that it recycles stereotypes of US cinema (some underlined that it seemed like an unofficial remake of Bad Boys). 

 

A relatively encouraging sign, though, comes from this first sliver of 2016, with the return of Chiu Keng Guan who, following the triumph of The Journey, managed to rekindle the enthusiasm of Malaysians for cinema and football, thanks to the epic sports movie Olabola.
With takings of almost 16 million ringgit, it was the third biggest earner of all time, behind Polis Evo and The Journey.

To close, there are reassuring signals of more bridges being built between the two markets, in the very year after they seemed to have totally cut each other off. At least two new commercial projects of upcoming names in film-making, the Malaysian Dain Said and the Indonesian Upi, will feature, respectively, stars of Indonesian cinema, Nicholas Saputra, and the Malaysian Bront Palarae. 

It will be interesting to see if these tentative steps will be converted into a genuine bilateral opening in the two markets and if they will pave the way for more than just the occasional hybrid.