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Motion pictures have captured the attention of human beings since its silent days over a century ago. Hollywood and Bollywood have simultaneously produced pop culture and provided jobs for decades, raising and trashing its stars along the way.

Cinema in Indonesia can trace its existence to the Dutch colonial era in the early 20th century, when going to cinemas started to become a more affordable and accessible form of entertainment than theaters, some of which were restricted by the Dutch to Caucasian residents.

After several ups and downs, by this year there are 1,700 screens nationwide, with 42 million moviegoers recorded last year. As of 2016, the government has allowed foreign investments in the local movie industry.

In the midst of this growth, a long-standing movie award persists. Held intermittenly since 1955, with a decade-long hiatus in the 1990s, the Indonesian Film Festival (FFI) has been revived and held annually since 2004, handing out gold-colored Citra Awards to winners.

An avid moviegoer and a sucker for award shows, I have always wondered about the voting scheme behind such awards. There are only a few notes about how the Academy Awards and Golden Globes are voted for, and fewer about the Citra Awards. Little did I know that I would find out this year.

A couple of months ago, an accomplished movie director on the FFI board offered me a chance to serve as one of the nine independent judges for this year’s festival.

The FFI started appointing independent judges in recent years, a practice reportedly long taken up by the Academy Awards.

The FFI’s independent judges are picked from various professions, including writers and activists. In comparison, the Usmar Ismail Film Awards selects judges mosly from film critics, while the Maya Awards features movie critics and filmmakers on its judging panel.

I hesitated first.

Sure, I enjoy movies, but what do I know about the technical aspects behind them? After being reassured that pointers and criterias would be provided to assist in judging, I summoned up my courage and said yes.

And it has been a steep and exciting learning curve.

FFI judging takes place in two stages. In the preliminary phase, representatives of various associations within the movie industry select nominations for each category from the dozens, or hundreds, of movies produced that year.

The process is long, often with jostling typical of the industry elsewhere. Just like the Oscars and Golden Globes, the selected nominees are announced prior to the award night. In the case of FFI 2018, it was in early November.

The second phase starts after nominations are announced, where registered FFI members, who comprise past winners, among others, and independent judges start to play their roles.

There are private screenings in certain cinemas for most full-length movies, twice for each movie, while the rest of nominees can be watched through password-locked links on the FFI website, the same site we cast our votes on afterwards.

As announced by the MCs at the beginning of the Citra Awards last Sunday, there were 163 voters in total this year including the nine independent judges.

Some of the nominees I voted for won, some did not. For me, it does not matter because the judging process alone already taught me a lot.

It is one thing to come as a relaxed moviegoer, another to watch knowing you must focus on certain aspects so you can assign points afterwards.

I became much more aware of how a slight sound, the flick of a hand, silly dialogue or an awkward scene could sway my vote one way or the other.

I have always been sensitive to froufrou lines and overacting, and it felt more acute during the three weeks I spent marathon watching the nominations, including the movies I have seen before for entertainment and the horror movies I would not have willingly watched had it not been for the FFI.

Yet intriguingly, although I diligently followed the provided judging criteria for most of the nominations, especially the more technical ones, I found myself following my heart for Best Picture.

The movie I voted for Best Picture was the movie that I simply enjoyed watching the most, where every element blended so well for me that at moments I forgot I was judging, even if said elements individually might not have been the best in their category.

And I suppose, that’s the gist that makes a movie grow upon release. I do not buy it that to be of high-quality a movie muse be tedious, hard to grasp or have an unpopular theme.

In the Name of the Father was dark as Phantom Thread was slow, yet both won awards and audience alike, and Daniel Day-Lewis in both movies was every bit as delightful to watch as in The Last of the Mohicans.

Inside the Citra Awards goodybag I found a booklet from of the Education and Culture as well as the Tourism Ministry calling on audience to internalize and discuss the message from movies beyond merely watching them.

While I agree that escapism should not be the only factor in creating a movie, audiences should not be forbidden from simply enjoying it either.

I guarantee you, if Indonesians, who just love to overshare, enjoy a movie they will spread the message without even being beseeched to do so by a ministry official.

It does not matter how great the message is or how many awards it collects, when a movie strives more to please arthouse audience than the general public then the message will remain escape the very audience it probably needs to enlighten the most.

My two cents: I am forever grateful for the opportunity given by FFI 2018, the chance to gain more knowledge on how to properly view a motion picture. I do not know if it will make me a more nuanced moviegoer, but I know I will remain that girl who stops on her tracks to relive a scene for the 100th time whenever a certain movie is rerun on TV.

And that girl is looking forward to enjoy more Indonesian movies next year.

— Lynda Ibrahim is a Jakarta-based writer with a penchant for purple, pussycats and pop culture.