Tiptoeing Towards Regional Coproductions, Asian Governments Take Funding, Reform Steps

variety.com:

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Governments and agencies across Asia are taking steps to expand and extend the cross-border film coproduction movement.

A seminar called ‘From Eurasia to Global Collaboration’ on Thursday, the third day of the Taiwan Creative Content Fest, represented a handy recap of funding and structural developments from four countries: The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

Alex Sihar, from Indonesia’s directorate of culture, part of the ministry of education, described an ongoing process intended to put the industry on a more professional footing. “While we have a long history of filmmaking and a very diverse culture, our films until recently have had very little international exposure, there has been little knowledge transfer and no incentives for location shooting or co-production.” Film policy was previously stretched across multiple ministries, but is now to be overseen by a film department under the education ministry, which is newly separated from educational matters.Co-productions are to be further encouraged and the country’s matching fund (which doubles up on funding available from the likes of the World Cinema Fund, TAICCA and Purin Pictures) is likely to be expanded.

Indonesia is also a founder member of the Asian Film Alliance Network (AFAN, alongside Mongolia, Singapore, Taiwan, The Philippines, South Korea and Malaysia).