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Filmmakers see silver lining in pandemic
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roducer Mandy Marahimin of Tanakhir Films’ Semes7a (Universe) planned to take the environmental documentary to other cities after it premiered at a selected number of theaters earlier this year.
“Then the pandemic hit,” Mandy said in August at a virtual discussion hosted by streaming giant Netflix.
As with other Indonesian industries, the film industry has been battered by the coronavirus epidemic. Major studios indefinitely postponed numerous new releases, while movie theater chains Cinema XXI and CGV have been temporarily closed since April.
Amid the many uncertainties, however, Indonesian filmmakers have found a silver lining: digital platforms.
The health crisis has inadvertently increased the popularity of video on demand (VOD) services. Netflix reported a profit of US$709 million from $5.8 billion in revenue in the first quarter of the year, while it recorded a quarter-on-quarter increase of 15.7 million to total nearly 183 million.
Producer Shanty Harmayn of BASE Entertainment said that people wanted something new while they were stuck at home.
“We want to watch [films], as it is one type of entertainment that we can enjoy at home,” she said. VOD seems to be one of the most preferred options among both filmmakers and viewers during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
BASE Entertainment, the studio behind Humba Dreams and Guru-Guru Gokil (Crazy Awesome Teachers), had to scrap its plans for theatrical premieres this year and decided to go straight to Netflix instead.
Director-screenwriter Riri Riza of Humba Dreams said that 2019 had actually been a good year for the local film industry, financially speaking, especially movie theaters. However, the advent of the COVID-19 epidemic in March 2020 had forced Indonesian filmmakers, film studios and production companies to rethink strategy.
Riri said that in recent years, Hollywood blockbusters and films from major Indonesian studios had come to dominate local theaters.
VOD services, on the other hand, offered a platform for the stories that had been alienated from the big screen while allowing access to local films to viewers of all age groups, he said.
Meanwhile, Mandy saw the crisis as an opportunity to learn.
She said many film festivals had gone completely online and thus provided an opportunity for aspiring filmmakers to watch and learn from the festival screenings.
This is especially so because festival attendees are generally by invitation only.
However, despite the increasing popularity of VOD and other streaming services, Shanty and Mandy remain confident that they will never replace movie theaters.
Mandy believes that people would return to theaters after the health crisis had subsided, although moviegoers were unlikely to flock to theaters as robustly as pre-coronavirus days.
“We need to celebrate the new [viewing] habit of accessing film through VOD, as not all films have access to theaters,” she underlined.
Meanwhile, Shanty stressed that movie theaters offered a wholly different experience from watching movies online, and that the big and small screens complemented each other.
