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Funding politics in European film festivals and its impacts on the

development of Indonesian cinema

Chapter · December 2017

DOI: 10.1201/9781315225340-39

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 Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds)
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5

Funding politics in European film festivals and its impacts

on the development of Indonesian cinema

R. Ihwanny & M. Budiman

Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia

ABSTRACT: Nowadays film festival is no longer a mere showcase for films; it also engages
in production and distribution. It all began with the Rotterdam film festival with its Hubert
Bals Fund, where Indonesian filmmakers began to receive funding from European film festi-
vals. This raised a number of issues, which become the focus of this paper. Two of such issues
are the suspicion about hegemony practices which operate between the funding providers
and the receivers, and whether the funded films contribute to the development of Indonesian
cinema, and, if so, what the contributions are. This study reveals that a funding program is
like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the hegemony practices have brought some
impacts on the representation of Indonesia. Funded films tend to perpetuate the stigma
of Indonesia as a third world country. On the other hand, the funding also brings positive
impact to the development of Indonesian cinema. The funding becomes a training ground
to sharpen the skills of filmmakers, as well as an arena to improve, develop, and promote
themselves. As a result, the Indonesian cinema has been enriched by a significant number
of experienced filmmakers, a condition which will ultimately make a positive impact to the
development of the cinema itself.

1 INTRODUCTION

Film festival nowadays is not only an exhibition site; it also engages in producing and
distributing films (Iordanova, 2015). These two aspects are apparent in programs which are
intended to fund the production and distribution of films. Such programs began in 1988 with
the Rotterdam film festival under the Hubert Bals Fund. Indonesia is one of the countries
whose many of its filmmakers have benefitted from the funding. They include names such as
Riri Riza, Ismail Basbeth, Yosep Anggi Noen, Mouly Surya, Ravi Bharwani, Kamila Andini,
and Edwin, to name a few. These names are usually associated with independent cinema.
The common issue around independent cinema is the fact that these films are successful
in international film festivals, yet they are not shown in their own country. Mainstream
Indonesian films become the centre of public attention and have established their position
in the domestic market, while independent films are pushed aside into the periphery and
become known only on the international stage (Aartsen, 2011).
The study will focus on the following European film festivals: Cannes (France), Berlin
(Germany), and Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Cannes and Berlin film festival have been
chosen because they are the biggest film festivals in Europe. Meanwhile, the Rotterdam film
festival has been chosen because it is the first film festival which grants funding to independent
filmmakers. Funding schemes offered by those film festivals are; the Berlinale Residency and
World Cinema Fund (Berlin), the Residence (Cannes), and Hubert Bals Fund (Rotterdam).
The Berlinale Residency and the Residence are fellowship programs. They are the forums
where new talents in cinema can train and meet professionals in the field. The Residence was
established in 2000; it is a program for twelve filmmakers from all over the world who are
selected to develop their first or second film scripts. This program is intended for young film-
makers who have directed one or a few short films or one feature film and are working on

271
their new feature film (Cinéfondation, 2016b). They are given the opportunity to stay in Paris
for four and a half months. During that time, these filmmakers will be assisted in preparing
their film scripts. A cultural session will be given at the beginning of the program, where the
participants will be shown several cultural objects around Paris. They will get a place to stay
in Paris, as well as personal assistance in writing their scripts; they will also be given an allow-
ance to the amount of eight hundred Euros a month, free access to all film theatres in Paris,
and a French language class (Cinéfondation, 2016a).
The Berlinale Residency, one of the programs of the Berlin film festival, was initiated in
2012 for the purpose of providing support to filmmakers from all over the world who have
gained success in their first film festival to develop their new project. Unlike the Residence,
Berlinale Residency only accepts a film project that already has a producer. Three filmmak-
ers are selected annually and will receive a fund to the amount of one thousand five hundred
Euros a month. The program provides mentoring sessions with renowned scriptwriters and
social gatherings with other filmmakers.
The World Cinema Fund (WCF) and the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) were initiated to
provide financial assistance to films that could not be produced without additional funding.
Each year WCF provides funding for filmmakers from Latin America, Central America,
the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South East Asia, Bangladesh, Nepal,
Sri Lanka, and countries from the Caucasus region. Meanwhile, HBF provides funding
for filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and a few East Euro-
pean countries. The countries receiving this funding are also referred to as the ‘third world’
countries.
WCF was established in 2004. WCF is divided into production and distribution funding.
The maximum amount of production funding for one film is eighty thousand Euros, while
ten thousand Euros is allocated for distribution (Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin, 2016).
The production funding must be used in the recipient’s country. As for distribution, only a
German distributor may apply. WCF launched an additional program in 2015 called WCF
Europe. There is no significant difference between the two programs, except for the partners.
If WCF requires a German partner, WCF Europe allows for cooperation with other Euro-
pean countries outside Germany.
The Rotterdam film festival was the first festival that offers funding for film. HBF, which
was established in 1988, provides two types of funding: (1) script and project development sup-
port and (2) the fund for post-production works (IFFR, 2016). The fund allocated for script
and project development may be used for developing film scripts, including for conducting
the necessary research, script writing, and translation, or for hiring a script consultant. The
fund provided for this purpose shall not exceed ten thousand Euros. The post-production
funding can be used for covering expenses during post-production stages, such as editing or
dubbing. The maximum amount is twenty thousand Euros.
HBF also has another program called NFF+HBF, which was established in 2006. This
program is a collaboration between HBF and the Netherlands Film Fund. The program is
intended to promote cooperation between Dutch producers and film projects from the coun-
tries funded by HBF. Only a Dutch producer is allowed to apply for funding and select a film
for the collaboration project, and also will receive the funding not exceeding fifty thousand
Euros. The selected film must be a project that is already receiving script and project develop-
ment funding.

2 METHOD

The funding is one of the key factors in the continuity of independent cinema. Nonetheless,
funding is not the last solution, because the conferring of the funding is followed by a suspi-
cion regarding hegemony practices operating between the fund providers and the receivers,
which will in turn have an impact on the representation of Indonesia. Another issue that
concerns films which are funded by this funding and their acceptance in their own country is,
do they make significant contribution to the development of Indonesian cinema? And if they
272
do, what is their contribution? This paper seeks to investigate these two main issues: (1) the
hegemony practices that operate within the funding and (2) the impact of the funding on the
development of Indonesian cinema. This paper will answer those questions using Gramsci’s
theory of hegemony.
Aeron Davis (2008) mentions three approaches that can be used to examine the produc-
tion of culture, namely political economy, textual analysis, and sociological/ethnographic.
Political economy is used to analyze the economic, political, and industry influences to the
production of a cultural product, while the textual approach analyzes the code, ideology,
discourse, and individuals that affect the production of cultural products. The sociological/
ethnographic approach focuses on observing and documenting the production process and
the people involved in a cultural product (Davis, 2008). This paper uses the textual approach
because it focuses on analyzing the discourses and individuals that affect the funded film
production.
In this paper, funding refers to the fund provided by European film festivals. Europe is
picked for a number of reasons: the continent is the birthplace of film festival and has now
become the dominant venue in festival film circuit. Europe is also picked for its long history
of colonialism and orientalism. Scholars have long expressed their concern with regard to
the funding provided by European film festivals. Shaw (2015) suspects that funding from
Europe is a form of post-colonialist intervention and an effort to perpetuate a Eurocentric
worldview. Halle (2010) suspects that it is a new form of orientalism.

3 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Antonio Gramsci, the scholar who popularized the theory of hegemony, stated that popu-
lar culture is the arena where the battle for hegemony occurs (Procter, 2004). Hegemony is
described as a process for creating an effective domination by using culture instead of physi-
cal force—a domination which is achieved through voluntary processes involving negotiation
as opposed to oppression (Procter, 2004). A film festival is part of popular culture that serves
as the arena for hegemony between the provider and receiver of the funding. A funded film
becomes the product of hegemony, which is the end result of a process of negotiation and
intervention.
At a glance, there is nothing dangerous about the funding provided by these festivals.
Terms of agreement consist of nothing more than technical requirements of a film or a script
to be funded. However, some of the conditions could potentially be seen as hegemony prac-
tices. The fund provider requires two things as the conditions for submitting a proposal: the
script or the rough cut of the film. Because script and rough cut are an unfinished form of
film, there is an opening for negotiations or even interventions by the fund provider to make
some fundamental changes to the project, specifically through the script writing assistance
program and an explicit request that the content, topic, and location of the project must be
kept open.
A number of filmmakers and scholars have spoken about this intervention. Gaston Kab-
ore, a film director from Burkina Faso, said that the danger from accepting the funding is the
attached condition that African filmmakers must depict Africa only to the extent the Euro-
peans are willing to accept. He said, “When you write a script to please European producers,
you take their expectations into consideration. Our films can become unbalanced; we are so
weak that we are turning like this and like that. The danger is forgetting your own people,
your own fundamental vision, and presenting Africa only as Europe is prepared to receive
it. The danger is we will lose our souls” (Turan, 2002). Falicov (2010) talks about a compro-
mise made during the script and idea development to fulfil the wishes of the fund provider,
“In some cases, global south filmmakers are asked to change their scripts and ideas to curry
favour with international funders.” De Valck made an important note about the compromise:
“Many festival films nowadays demand a say in which films are artistically interesting, before
they are made, and with these funds the festivals, in fact, influence which films will be real-
ized” (Falicov, 2010). These interventions can be seen in the themes of the funded films. Some
273
of them picked war, terror, or occupation as their themes, or any other themes that depict the
horrible living condition in a country without a good democracy.
Darmawan (2015) is infuriated because more than a few Asian films are portraying a
lonely individual wandering all over the world without purposes and often the films end with
the death of the character. She went on as far as questioning this phenomenon in a forum, “Is
this how the West perceives the East?” Chalida Uabumrungjit, Thailand filmmaker, answered
the question, “Blame the festival’s programmer, especially the Western, because they always
choose films of that sort. I always submitted films with happy themes with a lot of dialogues
and they hardly ever noticed them” (Darmawan, 2015). Such an intervention raises the con-
cern on the rise of new orientalism, “The dynamic of Orientalism at work here supports the
production of stories about other peoples and places that the funding source wants to hear.”
(Halle 2010). The new orientalism is different from the one in the past. The “old” orientalism
provides an image of the East as depicted by Western scholars, but now the depiction of the
East is provided the filmmakers from the East through their films, which are funded by the
West. Hence, the new orientalism may be defined as a depiction of the East as presented by
Easterners, with Western intervention and involvement in it.
Within the context of hegemony, the subordinate group will have a strong bond and asso-
ciation with the values and ideals proposed by the dominant (Jones, 2006). If we were to
apply this concept on the dynamics of funding, these filmmakers are the subordinate, and
they share the values and ideals of the fund provider. The simplest way to instil a value is by
involving those filmmakers in a cultural program. Those filmmakers receiving the fellowship
will be enrolled in French language classes, participate in field trips to cultural heritage sites
in Paris, and be given free access to watch films at film theatres in Paris.
Baumgärtel (2011) sees these ‘third world’ filmmakers as being in an ‘imagined world’.
They are entering a space where they are not bound by the regulations that restrict them in
their own countries (Baumgärtel, 2011). One of the spectres that haunt these filmmakers is
the censorship. For instance, in Indonesia, LSF (Lembaga Sensor Film) or the Film Censor-
ship Board is the state’s representative that controls what the audience can or cannot see in a
film. The Indonesian filmmakers also have to deal with UU Pornografi (Pornography Law),
which is considered as a limitation of their movement and freedom of expression. Mean-
while, the European film festivals are offering a forum where these filmmakers can freely
express their opinions. These are the conditions that ultimately provide the justification for
the ‘imagined world’ and the similarity of values and ideas between independent Indonesian
filmmakers and their European funders.
Throughout its twelve years of existence, only two Indonesians filmmakers have received
funding from WCF; they are Edwin and Ravi Bharwani. Kamila Andini is the only Indone-
sian filmmaker receiving fellowship from the Residence. These three filmmakers also received
funding from HBF. Five other Indonesian filmmakers have also received funding from HBF
in the last five years. Below is the list of them and their works.
This paper specifically focuses on Jermal. Jermal means a fishing platform in the open sea.
The film tells a story about Jaya, a boy who, after the death of his mother, went to look for his
father working as a foreman on a jermal. In his quest, Jaya had to confront the harsh life on a
jermal. Not only did his father refuse to acknowledge him as his son, Jaya also had to deal with
the abusive treatments by jermal child workers. This film clearly highlights the issue on child
labour, mixed with an exotic background of Indonesian seascape. Those poor children have to
work on a jermal without any opportunity to attend school; they are also unable to read or write.
Issues on exploitation are presented with a depiction of the miserable living conditions on
a jermal. Drinking water is rationed, while the child workers are wearing tattered clothes and
are often bare-chested. They live in a wooden hut without any partition or bathroom, and
they sleep on a thin sheet. Smoking and alcohol consumption are common among them. The
film also deals with violence. Jaya had to face physical and verbal abuse not only from his
father but also from the child workers. The harsh life on a jermal ultimately turns these child
workers into violent and aggressive adults.
Films funded by these festivals raised the darker side of human life—a child that has to
deal with loneliness, abandonment, father and child conflict, poverty, child labour, women
274
Table 1. Funding recipients.

Title Theme/Issue/Story Director Year Funding

The Seen and Loss, loneliness Kamila Andini 2011 HBF

Unseen 2012–2013 The Residence
Jermal A father who does Ravi Bharwani 2005 HBF
not acknowledge 2007 NFF + HBF
his own child; child 2008 WCF
labour and poverty
Postcards from Child abandonment; Edwin 2011 HBF
the Zoo women trafficking 2012 WCF
Peculiar A lower class female Yosep Anggi Noen 2012 HBF
Vacation worker supporting
and Other her husband
Illnesses
Atambua 39 Day to day struggle Riri Riza 2012 HBF
Derajat of the people in
Celsius Atambua
What They A love story between Mouly Surya 2012 HBF
Don’t Talk disabled teens
about When
They Talk
about Love
On Mother’s A story about three Putu Kusuma 2012 HBF
Head women confronting a
hard life in Bali
Another Trip A story about two Ismail Basbeth 2014 HBF
to the Moon women who live in the
forest

trafficking, exploitation, adultery, frontier life, and alienation. Locations selected for the
scenes are situated far from modern city environment: in Bali, on the open sea, at a zoo,
in Yogyakarta, in Atambua, in a School for Children with Special Needs, and in the forest.
Halle (2010) states, “The coproduced films must tell stories that offer to European audiences
the tales they want to hear.” The other thing the European moviegoers want to see is a confir-
mation that Indonesia is a third world country with an exotic and beautiful landscape and a
widespread poverty, ignorance, and weak enforcement of human rights. It is an obvious sign
of orientalism-romanticism that is still deeply rooted in European minds.
According to Lent (2012), a film is classified as independent when it is not bound by gov-
ernment regulations or censorship, or not produced by a big production house, or not adher-
ing to the style or method of conventional filmmaking. The films funded by the film festivals
can be classified as independent because they reject government’s censorship, are funded by
several sources, and are made unlike commercial films. Aartsen (2011) states that Indonesian
films can be classified into two groups, i.e. national commercial films and independent films.
Commercial films become the centre of public attention and have established their position
in the domestic market, while independent films are pushed aside into the periphery and
become known on the international stage.
The funding program became one of the saviours for an independent filmmaker who has
a financial problem. For example, the film entitled The Seen and Unseen by Kamila Andini.
Andini received funding to the amount of ten thousand Euros from HBF, a fellowship pro-
gram from the Residence, and funding from APSA Children Film Fund. However, this has
also brought in new problems, due to suspicions about the presence of hegemony practices
and the way Indonesia is represented in the film. A film can carry a strong symbolic mes-
sage with a powerful impact, especially when it comes to an image of a country (Herold
2004). Considering the fact that an independent film is enjoyed by international moviegoers,

275
the issue of representation becomes a crucial one. The theme and story of the funded film
highlighted a darker side of Indonesia with its widespread poverty and daily hardships. Ulti-
mately, these films are perpetuating the stigma of Indonesia as a ‘third world’ country. A
film funded by such programs becomes a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it promotes
Indonesia to the international world; on the other, it may be considered as creating a prob-
lematic representation.
Some of independent filmmakers later went on making commercial films. Ismail Basbeth
directed a commercial film entitled Mencari Hilal (2015). The film Ada Apa dengan Cinta 2
(2016), which was seen by more than three million moviegoers and distributed to Malaysia
and Brunei Darussalam, was directed by Riri Riza. These achievements show that the fund-
ing programs provided by European film festivals have actually made positive contributions
to the development of Indonesian filmmakers, as well as the Indonesian cinema. The fund-
ing from European film festivals becomes the training ground for Indonesian filmmakers to
sharpen their talents and skills. The festivals also serve as an arena to improve, to develop, and
to promote themselves on the international stage. The Indonesian cinema has been enriched
by a significant number of experienced filmmakers, a condition which will ultimately make a
positive impact to the development of the cinema itself.

4 CONCLUSION

The provision of the funding from European film festivals has become a problematic issue.
No one would argue that such funding programs can boost the skills and establish the career
of the filmmakers who are receiving the fund and promote the Indonesian cinema on the
world stage. However, the hegemony practices related to such programs are also perpetuating
the image of Indonesia as a land burdened with problems. In other words, the funded films
tend to propagate the stigma of Indonesia as a third world country. De Valck voiced her
suspicion by stating, “It may not be a representation; maybe it is a repression” (Mubarak &
Ageza, 2015). Such problematic representation also raises a new concept of orientalism or,
“self-exoticization” (Taymuree, 2014).
Mubarak and Ageza (2015) said that there are only few studies that examine the relation-
ship between Indonesian films and the taste of foreign film festivals. They asked whether
the Indonesian films, which are often shown and admired by the programmers at European
film festivals, belong to the “self-exoticization” group. They were also concerned that there
could be an attempt to erase the diversity of world’s independent films, one of which was
through the politics of providing funding that would steer the direction of the films receiving
those funds. This study seeks to fill the gap in the study of Indonesian films and the taste
of European film festivals by trying to answer those above questions using Gramsci’s theory
of hegemony. This study can be expanded even further by, among others, using the ethno-
graphic and political economy approach, namely by interviewing the recipients of the fund,
film critics, observers, and other players in the film industry and festivals.

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