Promoting movies in Jakarta'€™s movie theaters is more difficult than producing them because producers have to distribute their own products, according to filmmakers.

Because Indonesia had no distribution chains in the movie theater industry, film producers should also be responsible for distributing their works and making agreements with movie theater chains such as Cineplex and Blitz Megaplex to air their films, film producer Lala Timothy said in a recent discussion on the national film industry.

Since the 1990s, the cinema industry no longer has film distribution agents because previously, most agents cheated film producers on ticket sales. Producers, therefore, now directly distribute their films to theater companies.

'€œIn the movie theater industry, producers and exhibitors cooperate under profit-sharing arrangements and exhibitors usually foresee whether certain films will be profitable or not,'€ Lala told a discussion at the Taman Ismail Marzuki cultural center in Central Jakarta.

In comparison, Hollywood producers in the United States are only responsible for producing and selling films to distributors who, in turn, distribute them to cinemas as well as handling the promotion,'€ she said.

She explained that promoting films could cost two to three times more than their production expenditure.

Many producers, who had spent a lot of money on promotion, had voiced concerns because their movies were aired only for several days in cinemas due to low attendance, she said.

She suggested the government reinvigorate the movie theater industry by creating stricter regulations that could prevent its players from cheating one another, so that the industry could develop like its counterpart in Hollywood.

'€œThe government should support the movie theater industry because it can introduce our nation'€™s culture to the world and promote our tourism industry,'€ she said.

She said that the government tended to ignore the development of local films, reflected by the fact that it did not help promote good quality movies that won awards in international competitions.

Unlike the Indonesian government, the Malaysian government supported local films that won international awards by making all cinemas air the films for one month.

'€œI hope that our government can do the same as the Malaysian government, so that many Indonesians will be exposed to local films that have achieved global recognition,'€ she said.

Furthermore, Jakarta Tourism agency head of research and development, Abdul Rachem, said that Law No.33/2009 on films was inadequate to support the film industry like in the United States and Europe.

At the local level, Abdul said, the Jakarta administration also had no regulation supporting the film industry, which was part of Indonesia'€™s culture.

'€œWe are inviting all filmmakers to provide input so that the city administration can create a new regulation supporting the film industry,'€ he said.

He said that he encouraged filmmakers in Jakarta to make films that represented issues in the city, such as urbanization, traffic congestions and floods. Such films could be used as cultural media to introduce Jakarta to global audiences and the city administration would fully support them.

Jakarta has the biggest number of movie theaters in the country, where its residents can enjoy films in 60 movie theaters with 258 screens, or 37 percent of the total 162 theaters with 721 screens in 31 cities, according to data compiled by filmindonesia.or.id. (ian)

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