Hollywood films: No longer a menace, but source of inspiration

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Ask any aspiring filmmaker, young actor or actress or passerby about their favorite directors or movie stars and the most likely response would be a name from some of Hollywood's luminaries.

Riri Riza, a young local director whose latest feature film Gie was released last week, said American movie industry giants Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas were his all-time favorite directors, as well as little-known art-house director Jim Jarmusch.

For fellow director Mira Lesmana, they are Hollywood's own Steven Soderberg, Wim Wenders and Steven Spielberg.

If in doubt that such affinity is not shared by ordinary movie buffs, ask anyone lined up in front of the ticket counter for Batman Begins, War of the Worlds or Fantastic Four who their favorite actor or actress is and their answer would unlikely go beyond Tom Cruise, Ethan Hawke or Nicole Kidman.

Riri said that Hollywood directors were masters of storytelling who managed to stand by their idealism even though they got sucked into Hollywood's black hole of commercialism.

He said that another key to the appeal of Hollywood films was their ideal combination of art, technology and business.

Aspiring film director Ariani Darmawan of production house Video Babes said that Hollywood films had immensely influenced how local films were made.

"It has even influenced how young filmmakers edit their work and create animation," the avid Ethan Hawke fan said.

She said some local filmmakers had learned a great deal from Hollywood's marketing tactics of flooding the market with tie-in products.

"Director Mira Lesmana is one new filmmaker who successfully carried out this Hollywood marketing strategy," Ariani said.

Mira has successfully marketed two films, Petualangan Sherina (Sherina's Adventure) and Ada Apa Dengan Cinta (What's up with Cinta), drawing millions of people to theaters across the country to see them.

For regular movie fans, the most appealing feature of Hollywood is the make-believe. "I like Hollywood action films, because the action looks real and the suspense, you don't know what's going to happen next," said Andi, a third-year college student.

But if storytelling is the key to the domination of Hollywood films, why do films from other countries that are comparable to American films in storytelling fail to appeal to most people here?

The answer could be because Hollywood films have been around in Indonesia since the turn of the 20th century.

The first feature film screened in the country was Hollywood film The Life of an American Fireman, produced in 1903. Directed by Edwin S. Porter, the film was a novelty for local moviegoers.

The film, however, still had to compete with releases from China, Italy and India.

Hollywood movies continued to be screened at local theaters up until Japanese troops occupied a large part of the country and subsequently banned American movies.

After the Japanese capitulation, there was such a strong demand for American movies that importers of Hollywood movies set up the American Motion Pictures Association in Indonesia, which acted as a representative for big studios like Universal, 21st Century Fox, Metro Goldwyn Meyer (MGM) and Columbia.

Another syndication was set up in the late 1980s by the Subentra group. But rather than merely import Hollywood movies, the group, then owned by president Soeharto's cousin Sudwikatmono, also built its own network of movie theaters throughout the country known as the 21 network.

The network has been blamed for the deterioration of the country's film industry as the network denied the entry of homegrown movies for screening.

Who would have dreamed that two decades later young filmmakers would get their own revenge for the group's stranglehold?