Middle Cinema - Navigating art, capitalism, and failure in the Indonesian film boom

Abstract

Drawing from three years of ethnographic research and observant participation, my dissertation centers on Indonesian popular cinema at a dynamic moment for the industry, having now become the most dominant in Southeast Asia. Theater attendance numbers are climbing to heights unimaginable two decades ago, driven by a growing middle class, increased foreign investment, and the enthusiasm of Gen-Z, who despite coming of age in the TikTok era, constitute the vast majority of Indonesian moviegoers today.

But inside the film industry, producers still struggle to synthesize two distinct threads of cinema, the ‘mainstream’ romance and horror films that draw millions of young Indonesians to theaters but rarely break from established formulas and are seldom seen internationally, and the 'arthouse' films that attempt to experiment with form, provoke viewers with new themes or social critique, and have recently won critical acclaim at international film festivals, but are rarely watched by Indonesians. The late Indonesian director Richard Oh referred to this synthesis as "middle cinema”—a distinctly Indonesian form that could entertain and challenge audiences, and which he felt was critical for his nation’s filmmakers to develop their medium’s potential for building social consciousness within Indonesia and “soft power” abroad.

When I was hired by a Jakarta film studio to create and produce a streaming comedy-drama miniseries about Indonesians encountering the new age spiritual tourism world in Bali, my intention from the onset was to seek out this middle space myself, applying everything I'd learned as student of both anthropology and of film, to craft an experience with my Indonesian co-producers and writers that would attract local and international audiences, while also introducing new formal styles and social themes that might inspire further experiments. The frictions we encountered—between the global and the local, the producer and their audience, and between art and commerce—together illustrate the impossibility and inevitability of dreaming big in the semi-periphery.