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Thomas Barker, Indonesian Cinema After the New Order: Going Mainstream, Hong Kong University Press, 2019, 244 pgs.

After reviewing several books on East Asian films and pop culture, it is only right to review one on my country Indonesia. Thomas Barker, who is now with the Australian National University, published one in 2019. The author puts a disclosure at the beginning of the book: at the time of printing, December 2018, he owned shares at two Indonesian media companies.

In January 2008, Barker went to Jakarta to research something different—the film piracy industry. Pirated DVDs were the norm for Indonesian consumers, for two reasons. First, the original DVDs, which were available in some record stores, were too expensive for average Indonesians. The Australian video rental chain Video Ezy attempted to offer legitimate DVDs for rent at affordable rates, but consumers preferred to buy pirated discs that were theirs forever.

Secondly, pirated DVDs were so ubiquitous, even with their own stores in shopping malls. Obviously, they covered genres not covered by the licensed imports: American and British TV series. Anime. European blockbusters. After all, the pirates only needed to download everything available online, get some translators to made Indonesian subtitles, burn the files onto discs, and distribute them. The friendly store staff would welcome you to try the discs before buying, even offering free replacements if your copy didn’t work at home.

And as always, piracy is a dangerous business, tied as it is to police corruption, gangs and also the drug and sex trades. It also became dangerous for Barker to investigate.

As fate had it, he interviewed director Hanung Bramayanto whose religious romance film, Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Verses of Love) was about to be released on 28 February 2008. Did Hanung worry about losing money from piracy? The director wasn’t worried, and the theatrical release sold 3.7 million tickets. The success gave Barker a new topic to explore—the rise of Indonesian cinema.

Modern Indonesian cinema grew up in the liberalism of Reformasi, the years that followed the fall of Suharto’s New Order regime (1966–1998). From just one major release in 2001, the horror Jelangkung (The Uninvited), Indonesian cinema blossomed, particularly after the release of the teen romance Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What’s Up with Love?) [AADC] in 2002, the impact of which was akin to the success of My Sassy Girl in South Korea. AADC rejuvenated the Indonesian cinema, and that is the reason the cover image of this book is a production shot of Ada Apa Dengan Cinta 2? (2016).

Barker’s main thesis is that Indonesian cinema is a part of Indonesian pop culture, a view that he believes is still overlooked in Indonesia. Until recently, many Indonesian public intellectuals looked for the National Film—akin to the Great American Novel̄—which never appeared, at least according to their criteria.

This idea was developed by director Misbach Yusa Biran and writer Salim Said, who wanted Indonesian cinema to be the “master in its own house”. Not just in competing with imported films, but also having its own national identity, instead of copying American and Hong Kong conventions.

The National Film School, unfortunately, never had its moment. In the 1970s, as Indonesians of all economic classes enjoyed movies in theatres and even village fields, the cultural commentators complained about the banality of Indonesian films. In the 1980s, comedies and teen dramas romanticised American leisure and hobbies, followed by the dark days of the 1990s. Fast forward to today, and Indonesian films have dominated theatres and stand proudly besides American and East Asian titles on streaming services.

Indonesian film
in the 20th Century
◯

In 1979 producer Soemardjono defined the National Film as a form of decolonisation that must serve nation-building, and credited Usmar Ismail as the father of Indonesian film. Usmar was an anti-Communist, a nationalist, and most importantly, a native Indonesian.

The Dutch made some documentary films to promote the Dutch East Indies, before L. Heuveldorp directed and produced the folklore Loetoeng Kasaroeng (The Lost Monkey) in 1926. Movie theatres expanded in the 1920s, all owned by Europeans or Chinese. Native Indonesians were relegated to crew or actors, while the Europeans and Chinese controlled the direction and production.

The Japanese military propaganda unit recruited Indonesian writers and producers, who were impressed by the Japanese’s idealism and courtesy, something they never experienced with the Chinese producers. Naturally the Japanese believed that their films must indoctrinate and educate, and Barker believes this was the origin of the National Film School.

One of these propaganda officers, a Korean known as Dr Huyung, stayed on in Indonesia after independence and created the examples of National Film: Frieda, about a Eurasian girl who sides with Indonesian patriots, and Gadis Olahraga (Sportsgirl), about a runner who aims to qualify for the Southeast Asian Games.

But once more, Chinese Indonesians returned to showbiz as producers, distributors, and cinema operators, and by 1954 Hollywood films were dominating Indonesian theatres. Their names are lost in history, not just because of their ethnicity, but also because Indonesian film historians see them as nothing but capitalists.

By the early 1960s, President Sukarno had sided with the communists and Russian and Chinese films had replaced Hollywood’s. The anti-Communist artists prevailed following the fall of Sukarno in 1966, and Hollywood films returned along with Italian and Japanese. Indian Indonesians, however, had become Suharto’s choices of producers and distributors.

The anti-Communist filmmakers and journalists eventually turned against the New Order in the 1970s. Several films were banned, like Romusha, which the government said could offend Tokyo; Wasdri on official power abuse; and Yang Muda Yang Bercinta (Young Love) for romanticising student activism.

Like elsewhere, the revolutionary 1970s gave way to the capitalist 1980s. Video cassettes created the demand for exploitation films, and Indonesia created what the Pacific market wanted: horror and sensual action. White actors, both local expats and Hong Kong regulars, were also hired, especially for Warkop DKI comedies. Chris Noth got his first starring role in Peluru dan Wanita (Jakarta) in 1988, and Cynthia Rothrock had some Indonesian titles after her Hong Kong days.

Exploitation descended into soft porn in the 1990s, as major companies moved to television dramas and the theatres were saturated by American, Hong Kong, and Indian titles. Highbrow Indonesian productions were reserved for international film festivals, and the fall of Suharto in 1998 ended this sorry decade for Indonesian cinema.

Indonesian directors of the 1990s, however, were well-trained in two places: film schools in America and MTV Asia. Indonesian music videos were hardly censored, because they followed the guidelines of MTV Asia that were good enough for the government. Mira Lesmana and Riri Riza, who later produced AADC, made Indonesia’s only Gen X and mainstream guerilla film, Kuldesak (Cul-de-sac).

Overall, the Reformasi was a liberal period, and the Asian Financial Crisis didn’t stop the decision of investors to cash in this euphoria of freedom and creativity. Western governments and foundations were also eager to fund young filmmakers to pursue their vision for a new democratic Indonesia. The respectability of Indonesian films returned, and Indonesian box offices had become the norm again after Jelangkung and AADC.

Horror and Heaven
◯

Barker looks at two popular genres of the 2000s, horror and Islamic films. Horror is cheap, mainstream, and profitable anywhere in the world. In the Indonesian context, Barker argues that the Indonesian taste for horror was nurtured by the New Order: The mass killings of suspected Communists in the late 1960s, extrajudicial killings in the 1980s, and ironically, the anti-Communist film Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI (Treachery of G30S/PKI) which was released in 1984.

The four-and-a-half-hour docudrama retells the conflict between the Army and the Indonesian Communist Party that led to the torture and murder of several generals on 30 September 1965, and the subsequent Army counterattack led by Suharto.

Infamous for the prolonged killing and torture scenes from the beginning, the movie was shown on free-to-air channels every 30 September and was often a mandated viewing for school children. The conservative New Order government, therefore, normalised Indonesian children to watch gory scenes in the name of anti-Communism.

Meanwhile, horror movies in the 1980s usually have the plot of a remote village disturbed by chaos. An agent of order, like a Muslim cleric or an officer, fights the chaos and restores order. Jelangkung, the first major Reformasi horror, follows the style of late-1990s Japanese horror and combines the aesthetics of music videos and the Asia Extreme thrill.

The protagonists of the film don’t find the ghost in the remote village, but it follows them to Jakarta, a clear subversion of the past convention. Order is not restored by the final scene, as the ghost instead jumps at the screen for the audience’s last scream. Originally planned as a TV movie, Jelangkung instead became Indonesia’s first digital movie and scored 1.5 million ticket sales throughout its three-month run.

The opposite of horror is Islamic romance. Islamic evangelism also flourished with Reformasi and, like its Christian counterpart, targeted the cosmopolitan middle class. Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Verses of Love) set the convention for other movies: an Indonesian man studies overseas and has several love interests who are impressed by his piety. Many of them are based on novels that endorse polygamy, but such endorsements never makesit into films, where the protagonist must choose his single love (the tragic death of another love interest sometimes solves the dilemma).

The second generation of Islamic romance in the 2010s have female protagonists and insert foreign places in the title, from Europe to Beijing. They offer the romance of travel, the professional aspiration of the Muslim women, and as always, the joy of discovering Islam.

In his review of this book for Journal of Religion & Film, Ahmad Nuril Huda wishes that Barker could be more critical and sceptical of the popularity of Islamic romance, since the evangelical views represented in these films don’t represent all Islamic views. While I never think Islamic romance is for me, I could understand its popularity and public appeal.

The Business
of Indonesian Showbiz
◯

Finally, we need to know who runs Indonesian cinema. Until two decades ago, there was only one name: Cinema 21. Suharto’s cousin Sudwikatmono worked with the Tan brothers to import Hong Kong films in the 1970s and continued the cooperation even after the brothers stopped talking to each other in the 1980s.

Sudwikatmono and Benny Suherman, along with Tan Shui Liong, opened Cinema 21 in 1987 at 21 Thamrin Street, Jakarta and steadily forced other cinemas to surrender or perish, the reason independent cinemas resorted to play Indonesian soft porn or foreign B movies by 1993.

After Reformasi, the cinema rebranded as Cinema XXI and continued its monopoly before a mysterious challenger, Blitz Megaplex, emerged and even sued XXI in 2009. A court document revealed that several New Order generals were on Blitz’s board.

An international consortium composed of South Korea’s CJ Corporation, Hong Kong’s Orange Sky Golden Harvest, and Australia’s Village Cinemas bought Blitz in 2014, and the chain is known now as CGV. In response, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC invested in Cinema XXI, and Benny Suherman, who left Indonesia as a fugitive in 1998, returned sixteen years later.

In the 21^st century, there are seven major film companies in Indonesia. Five of them are owned by Indian Indonesian families. The other two are owned by Sudwikatmono’s son Agus Lasmono and Sudwikatmono’s old ally Leo Sutanto, who started his career as a translator of Hong Kong movies.

The Indians are Sindhis who migrated to Java in the 1920s. They imported Indian films, first for the Indian community and then for the wider Indonesian public; and transitioned from the textile trade into film production following the rise of the New Order. In the early 1980s, they were responsible for producing successful Warkop DKI comedies and exporting Indonesian exploitation videos to Global South markets.

When Suharto allowed the creation of private television channels in the early 1990s—all headed by his children and allies—the moguls created all the local content including the Indonesian television drama, sinetron (electronic cinema).

The end of the New Order did not affect them. They had all the capital to fund the Reformasi’s new ideas, to create new companies, and to produce new content for all the new television stations and cinema chains.

After all, Indonesian films only need to steer clear of few things: support for communism and other left-wing politics; sex and nudity, as well as on-screen kissing. Negative portrayal of the police and the military was also a no-no—although one corrupt character is allowed, like in the plot twist of The Raid. And finally, controversial historical events like past riots and atrocities, a common source of contention between the government and liberal writers and academics.

One can feel Barker’s frustration in this chapter, as the government regularly denied public screening for documentaries and films that highlighted past military atrocities, while the public paid little attention as they waited for the next Hollywood blockbusters.

Domestic Cinema
in Your Home
◯

When the book was published, streaming services seemed impossible in Indonesia. If original DVD was too expensive for Indonesians, what about broadband connection and smart TV? The government and conservatives worried about the content, and the pay TV services were unhappy with this new competition.

And yet, five years on, middle-class Indonesians have access to streaming services. Some major changes have taken place. The all-powerful Hollywood lobby might have persuaded the government to accept streaming, including for Telkom Indonesia to unblock access to Netflix. In fact, now all telecommunication networks and even the apps themselves offer affordable plans for all social classes.

The government might have made unknown deals with all parties related to the pirated DVD industries. The piracy business ended once licensed content was available in applications and the public were willing to pay for it.

Indonesian film companies smoothly transitioned to streaming services by producing riskier and more sophisticated series and movies, as well as releasing their classic catalogues. The pandemic also provided a sea change to the cinema business.

Hollywood never recovered its dominance, as many American titles are app-exclusive, leaving more room for Indonesian films in the theatres. The ongoing Hollywood’s blockbuster slump is also a blessing for Indonesian films, which offers a variety of horrors and comedy-dramas. For better or worse, the Islamic romance genre has stepped back from the limelight, and Indonesian cinema never invests in the high cost, high risk science fiction and animation.

As for action, during the writing of this review, Thomas Barker was excited for Jessica Alba’s Trigger Warning on Netflix, which is directed by Indonesian female director Mouly Surya.

Indonesia does not need the National Film to flourish. The government tried to float the “creative industry” centralisation in the early 2010s, which only led to corruption and confused direction. Instead, the constant interaction between producers and consumers, whether through social media or market research, has created production of movies that are satisfying for both parties.

Indonesian cinema has become the master in its own house, ironically because of capitalism.

How to cite: Rustan, Mario. “Master in Its Own House: On Thomas Barker’s Indonesian Cinema After the New Order.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 7 Jul. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/07/07/indonesian-cinema.

Mario Rustan is a writer and reviewer living in Bandung, Indonesia. [All contributions by Mario Rustan.]