(Photo by P.J. Leo)

Reni Suci never thought the Sumbawa Cinema Society (SCS), the film community she has been part of since 2015, could do more than simply produce and screen films.

The university lecturer said the SCS initially focused on producing films, like many other film communities. However, as movie theaters are rare in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), they eventually held public screenings in the house of the community founder.

“It is useless to produce movies but none of the Sumbanese people could watch them,” the 30-year-old said in a recent interview.

The simple screenings later evolved into a medium for public education when the community produced a documentary film on students of a vocational school sent abroad by school administrators as undocumented migrant workers. The students posed as participants of an internship program and were on tourist visas.

As the region has a record of poor legal protection of migrant workers, the community came up with the idea to hold the screening and invite the school principal, local government officials as well as migrant worker agencies.

“The screening was followed by a discussion about migrant workers, including the safety risks of undertaking an internship on a tourist visa,” said Reni.

She said the result was satisfying when the school received a letter of reprimand from the local Manpower and Transmigration Agency.

Another movie buff, Puput Juang, a farmer from the small district of Kebumen, Central Java, founded film community Kedung to hold regular screenings in his area in December 2015.

“Even before the community existed, I often held film screenings, but I later found out that Kebumen students have extracurricular activities of filming and there was no medium to showcase their works which are quite good,” he said.

He cited the documentary film Jenitri, produced by the students, that received the Dewantara Award at the Indonesian Film Appreciation (AFI) awards in 2015. The film was also honored as best documentary at the “Documentary Days” event organized by the School of Economics at the University of Indonesia (UI) and the Jogya Student Film Festival, both in 2014.

Documentary film Golak by vocational school SMKN 1 Karanggayam, also in Kebumen, won for best editing and cinematography at the Youth Sineas Award in 2016.

“I hope in the future we can hold screenings at community halls so Kebumen residents could see works of their own,” Puput said.

Reni and Puput were among the respondents to research conducted by the Cinema Poetica Research Center (CPRC) that set out to clearly map the extent of the burgeoning film communities in Indonesia.

The research center, a new division of the community-based film website, conducted surveys and interviews with representatives of 77 film communities taking part in this year’s Indonesian Film Community Convention in Baturaden, Central Java, from March 25 to 27.

Although the number of respondents did not represent the total number of film communities in existence, they meet the demographic spread, activities and networking gauges in the qualitative research.

Lead researcher Levriana Yustriani acknowledged the research was still in the preliminary stage in mapping film communities. She said it was inspired by the current situation in which film communities remained sidelined from the film industry with little support from the government, despite their sheer size in number and also potential.

“This research focused on the production and exhibition activities held by the film communities, the culture of movie watching in society and how it is affected by technology,” she said by video conference link from Melbourne, Australia, where she is taking her graduate studies.

The findings were presented at co-working space KeKini ruang bersama in Cikini, Central Jakarta, on Sept. 15, which was followed by a discussion on the right forms for film communities to live up to their potential.

(Photo by Seto Wardhana)

FILM FINDINGS

The research found that the advent of the Reformasi era in 1998 marked the immense growth of film communities, proliferating from a small number of student clubs established at universities into a civil movement with potential talents, distributors, exhibitors and even data collection and archiving for the film industry.

The discussion that followed presented arguments on the phenomenon’s correlation with the social and political changes in the country, as well as technological innovations at the turn of the 21st century.

“Back then the cost of private screenings for one hour was too expensive for a student allowance, but for the same cost a film community can now rent a high resolution projector for the whole day,” said Dimas Jayasprana of Cinema Poetica.

Only four clubs, or 5 percent of the respondents, were established before 1998, and all were campus affiliated.

The majority were established more recently, with 53 percent of the total respondents not bearing any campus affiliation, 38 percent consisting of student clubs and only seven film communities, or 9 percent, not campus affiliated and already established legal entities. One of their two main activities is regular film screenings, preferably every month, while 80 percent of the films screened were Indonesian films, singling them out as the second-run theaters for national films in regions untouched by the establishment of theaters.

Other main activity is film producing, mostly short fictional works, followed by short documentaries — dominated by student clubs.

Only the student clubs have fixed budgets allotted by their campus — that explains the data on film production — and only three independent organizations received regular funds from the regional government. Less than half of the respondents received government support in the form of collaborative programs or the provision of venues for screening.

According to co-researcher Deden Ramadani, one of the communities receiving funds from the local government has an official as a member.

“It’s an example of how government support can be obtained through good networking,” he said.

However, film producer Alex Sihar, who took part in the discussion, argued that social and political reform also played an important role in keeping film communities outside the government domain. He said in the past the government actively facilitated film communities as a means of control.

“With the revision of the law on foundations in 2000, even if a film community has legalized its organization as a foundation, it would be difficult to get government funds to support their activities. The new law no longer sees government support of social foundations as an obligation but charity.”

Another participant, communication expert Ade Armando, advised that all stakeholders in the film industry should start formulating a policy that enabled film communities to live up to their potential as the backbone of the industry.

“This potential has not been seen as an asset, even the communities themselves have not realized their own potential. It’s high time to think of a way to include film communities as an integral part of the industry,” he said.