Hopes that the Indonesian government would properly support the local film industry this year remained unrealized in 2014.

The movies produced this year show that filmmakers must continue rely on their own resources instead of to support '€” even though officials continue to optimistically tout plans to develop the local industry.

In April, for example, the then-Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry launched a report that contained a plan to restructure 18 sectors of Indonesia'€™s creative economy, including filmmaking.

'€œThis book was formulated through a series of focus-group discussions between the country'€™s filmmakers, industry experts and academics to shed new light on where should Indonesia be in at least the next five years,'€ Felencia Hutabarat, who lead the film research team for the project, said.

According to Hutabarat, any blueprint for developing Indonesia'€™s film industry had to be adapted to local factors, including film culture, audience behavior, geography, history, law and the economy situation.

'€œWe couldn'€™t mention a specific nation as a model, for the Indonesian condition is very different from those nations with firm structure for their film industry, such as France or South Korea.'€

Implementing the ministry'€™s report, which is currently receiving its final touches, will face challenges, given that the Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry was restructured by President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo after he took office in November.

Jokowi intends to give responsibility for developing creative economy to a new, non-ministerial institution called the Creative Economy Agency (BEK) '€” a move that has pros and cons.

While the agency might be able to streamline how the government approaches the creative economy, specifically by eliding a tortuously slow bureaucracy; it is not clear if an independent agency would have enough power to be taken seriously '€” or if it could issue ministerial regulations that carry weight.

'€œWe have to ensure that the research [report] can be an aid for the policy-making process,'€ Hutabarat said.

While the government is busy planning; at the grass roots, filmmakers continue to make progress on their own.

Notably, there was a reorganization for this year'€™s Festival Film Indonesia (FFI), which hands out the Citra awards, or local equivalent to the Oscars.

The event, previously organized by the government, was given over to the Indonesian Film Body (BPI), which comprises representatives from film communities throughout the nation.

The BPI employed a jury of 100, including more than 80 people working in the industry, to determine nominees and winners for the Citras in 2014 '€”  in contrast to the past, when a smaller group, comprised principally of bureaucrats, ran the show.

It was a major step toward removing the tarnish on the awards after the FFI gave the Citra for Best Film to Ekskul in 2006, even though the movie used the soundtrack from the Korean war movie Taegueki and The Lord of the Rings without permission.

It was decision that appalled local filmmakers, who returned their Citras to the FFI in mass in protest.

However, in a sign of the changing times, Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza ended their 7-years boycott of the FFI and submitted their film Sokola Rimba (Jungle School) to the festival for consideration.

There have also been several important co-productions between Indonesia and other countries this year.

As opposed to previous years, when the focus was on arthouse films; co-productions in 2014 aimed at producing popular hits, such as Killers and The Raid 2: Berandal.

Killers is a collaboration between an Indonesian crew and Nikkatsu, Japan'€™s oldest major movie company, which was founded in 1912 and remains one of its giants.

The Raid 2: Berandal was a co-production between local production house Merantau Films and the Los Angeles-based film production and sales company XYZ Films. It was as the second highest grossing film of 2014 with 1,434,272 tickets sold, according the website filmindonesia.or.id.

As the year comes to a close, two films have hit the screen in local theaters: martial-arts actioner The Golden Cane Warrior (produced by Mira Lesmana) and Supernova (produced by Sunil Soraya), an adaptation of Dee Lestari'€™s beloved novel.

Both films are works from two veterans in the country'€™s commercial cinema scene. Lesmana'€™s Rainbow Troops (2008) is the highest grossing film in Indonesian film history, and Soraya'€™s Tenggelamnya Kapal Van der Wijck (The Sinking of the Van der Wijck) was the biggest blockbuster film in 2013.

Growth has also been seen outside of the mainstream, which is centered on films chosen by Cinema 21, the nation'€™s largest movie-theater chain.

Film festivals in Yogyakarta and Surakarta, Central Java, such as Garin Nugroho'€™s Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival (JAFF) and Festival Film Solo (where the writer is a programmer) have started to move to a paid-admission strategy.

Although tickets are not longer free, people seem to appreciate what they must pay for. More and more screenings are fully booked and many people returned empty-handed when tickets sold out.

Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival screens Asian independent films while Festival Film Solo focuses on new talents in the short film scene.

'€œThis shows that audiences hold a belief that alternative cinema is different from what they see in the commercial theatres. This is proven from the fact that although we put price on the tickets, the audience numbers rose,'€ said Ismail Basbeth, a member of JAFF'€™s programming team.  

The writer is co-founder of the film criticism website Cinema Poetica.

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