How Independent filmmakers in Southeast Asia are on the rise
SEPTEMBER 11, 2019 - BANGKOK
Independent filmmakers in Southeast Asia face numerous obstacles, but a burgeoning network of support — such as film fund Purin Pictures — is fueling growth and ambition.
Speaking at the Purin Pictures Round table industry event in Bangkok in July, Monster Jimenez, a producer from the Philippines, outlined some of the obstacles facing Southeast Asian independent cinema. She said that when it comes to accessing funding or distribution, films from Southeast Asia are often lumped together as a genre, forced to compete for the same limited resources, despite the diversity of content emerging from around 10 film-producing nations across the region.
“I’ve had a hard time convincing sales agents that my film was a hip-hop film, not a Southeast Asian film,” said Jimenez, who produced Treb Monteras’s Respeto, about the friendship between a young rapper and an older poet. “My hope is that five years from now, every film we make can stand alongside those from Japan, Korea and France and get the same crack at the funding. It feels like we’re competing with the rest of the world but we’re always at a disadvantage.”
That’s a challenge Bangkok-based Purin Pictures is keen to tackle. Launched in 2017 as a film fund, it provides grants to around 10 film a year from the region, along with supporting film-related events such as Vietnam’s Autumn Meeting and SeaShorts Film Festival in Malaysia. Round Table was launched this year in partnership with Bangkok ASEAN Film Festival to explore the issues facing the industry through panels, workshops and spotlights.
“We’re modelled after non-profit funds like [Rotterdam’s] Hubert Bals and [Busan’s] Asian Cinema Fund (ACF), which started out as film festivals and created a fund later,” explains Aditya Assarat, who manages the fund with fellow Thai filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong. “So after two years, we felt we needed a tentpole event in Bangkok to have more of a physical presence and let people know who we are.”
Purin Pictures is not aiming to support films that are a sure bet on the festival circuit, but to discover and nurture new talent in Southeast Asian indie cinema. The fund is an initiative of the Purin Foundation, a Thailand-based private foundation headed by Visra Vichit-Vadakan, the granddaughter of playwright and politician Luang Wichitwathakan, and herself a filmmaker with credits including 2013 docudrama Karaoke Girl. Initially, the foundation focused on educational and social development projects, but Visra decided to take it into cinema and brought in Anocha and Aditya to manage the fund. “I felt we needed to create a space for storytelling in this region, and support these young voices so they can present their own perspective,” says Visra, who splits her time between the US and Bangkok. “We’re not a huge fund, but we thought it would be too narrow to only think nationally, so we decided to open it up to the whole of Southeast Asia.”
“There’s a lot of creativity in the region, but not much government funding,” adds Anocha. “Some of the funding for art film is coming from patrons of the visual arts, but that kind of support is still quite small.”
Before Purin Pictures was launched, Southeast Asian filmmakers would mainly apply to Hubert Bals and ACF. “But those funds are handling the entire world or all Asia,” says Aditya, “so it’s very competitive and very few new talents were getting funded.” Adding an extra dimension to the support of under-represented voices in the region, Purin Pictures earmarks at least one grant per funding round for a first or second-time female filmmaker.
Another initiative of Purin Pictures is a long-term research project, SEAStudy, which aims to compile data year to year and present a comprehensive picture of the health of the Southeast Asian independent film industry. The first edition of the report, based on films that world premiered in 2016, reveals how dependent the industry currently is on Europe for both distribution and funding.
Among the 122 Southeast Asian indie films made during this period, around one third were international co-productions, mostly with France, Germany and Qatar (reflecting the work of Doha Film Institute). Around 62% of these films were funded with so money from local sources, with 12% gaining support from international film funds. When it came to international distribution, Europe was by far the biggest export market, accounting for 35% of sales by territory, followed by Asia and the Middle East. The report also found that while 76% of these films received a local theatrical release, roughly 60% were only released in one to 10 cinemas. “For us filmmakers in Thailand, a theatrical release is more for the heart than for revenue – our market is Europe with other bits here and there,” Adita says.
While the economies and, in some cases, the box office of Southeast Asian nations are growing, this is a situation that isn’t likely to change any time soon. With the exception of Indonesia and Vietnam, which are growing from a very low base, box office across most of the region is relatively flat and the space for films that are not mainstream local or Hollywood titles remains a tiny sliver.
“It’s a tough business, not only within your own country, but also due to changes happening at a glob- al level,” says Aditya. “Thailand’s box office is not doing great — we have 70 million people, but purchasing power is not high, and only 2 million can afford to buy tickets. On top of that, there’s this global shift to streaming that’s also affecting us. It’s difficult to say whether this is a local or global issue, or perhaps both.”
The next step for filmmakers could be to explore streaming platforms. Netflix is competing with several regional services, including iflix, Viu and HOOQ, who are all investing in local-language content. But it remains to be seen where that leaves Southeast Asian arthouse cinema. According to SEAStudy, indie films from the region are being made on an average budget of $330,000, but only earning around $32,000 per film from SVoD platforms.
While a regional market is yet to emerge, what is changing is a growing network of Southeast Asian labs and workshops and a community of filmmakers who are working across borders. “We have people like Lee Chatametikool, an editor who is working across the whole of Asia and beyond, and Thai DoP Chananun Chotrungroj, who worked on [Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair’s] The Third Wife,” says Anocha. This is happening despite the huge cultural, economic and linguistic differences between countries, and the fact the region’s star systems remain distinct — there are very few Thai stars, for instance, that would draw an audience even in neighbouring Malaysia.
“It’s been great to see on our panels that there is already a network of people — and events like this are just fuelling it, it’s not like we’ve had to build it ourselves,” says Visra. “There’s a camaraderie in the region that already exists.”
