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View all search resultsRI’s film industry boom leaves little room for small producers
Indonesia currently has only 2,375 movie screens in 496 theaters serving a population of over 280 million, one of the lowest ratios in Asia.
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View of the 'Now Showing’ movie list as seen in front of Cinema XXI inside a shopping mall on Jl. Basuki Rachmat, East Jakarta, on Thursday. (The Jakarta Post/Iqro Rinaldi)
L
ike movie characters clawing their way toward a happy ending, small film producers are fighting their own uphill battle, one simply to be seen by audiences.
“For a small production house, even with a good-quality movie production, it will be difficult for them [to break into cinemas] without the access to, or involvement of, large players in the production process,” Satrio Pepo Pamungkas, director and producer at iVOLKS Kreatif, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Satrio is among the independent filmmakers who lament that, despite the country’s booming movie industry, the gates to the big screen remain tightly guarded. According to him, several major production houses have tightened their grip on cinema chains, allowing them to prioritize their own films for the limited screening slots.
He warned that this prolonged dominance risks creating a form of “hegemony,” where filmmakers feel compelled to churn out only mainstream crowd-pleasers. Meanwhile, independent creators hoping to introduce fresh perspectives and diversify Indonesia’s storytelling palette continue to face scarce screen access.
Similarly, Gavriel Barnabas, a producer at SantaraFilmachine, said that the domination of a few major players in the movie industry had led to what he called a “creative block,” referring to the dominance of similar types of films in the market.
Speaking to the Post on Thursday, Gavriel pointed out that some major players already hold exclusive deals with the country’s largest cinema chain, Cinema XXI. Meanwhile, small producers cannot rely on other theater networks such as CGV Cinema and Sam’s Studio, which operate too few screens to help filmmakers break even.
Another challenge for new production houses hoping to enter cinemas is that theaters tend to trust post-production work only if it is handled by high-end studios.
