So, the rakyat is being lined up to be the fools again. Ready to pay RM20 for a foreign (Hollywood) movie? I wonder if movies from Indian subcontinent and Chinese diaspora will be penalised as well, just to force us to endure 2 hours of torture in the name support local movies.

Frankly speaking, I don’t really fancy watching local movies. The ones I enjoyed were some  P Ramlee and AR Badul movies looooong time ago. Nowadays, I’ll fail if there’s any question on local actors or movies. I was blasted by Then for wasting time watching Naana Neeya few months back, so its not a matter of Malay movies, but Tamil movies as well.

Local film directors are obviously gleeful over the proposal by the Malaysian Film Producers’ Association to hike the ticket price for Hollywood movies.  Some of their comments:

“It is a good step but it should not stop there,” said award-winning director Datuk Paduka Shuhaimi Baba.

She said another way to help the industry was for local producers to have a bigger cut of the box-office collection.

“Currently, producers and cinema operators are sharing the ticket sales equally. Producers should get a higher cut.”

She said cinema operators could also share the promotional costs of local movies.

Shuhaimi said many countries were imposing regulations to protect their movie industry.

Director Ahmad Idham Ahmad Nazri said:

cinema operators would also benefit from higher ticket prices for Hollywood movies.

“The screening for a local movie now is limited to 14 days — the minimum required by regulations — as cinema operators will replace it with Hollywood movies to generate more income.

“With a hike, they will get more income from one or two Hollywood movies, thus encouraging them to give more days to local movies.”

Director Afdlin Shauki said the number of Hollywood movies in local cinemas should be limited.

He said China only allowed 20 Hollywood movies to be shown annually.

“It means only the best movies from Hollywood are shown, which is good for movie-goers”

Afdlin, however, cautioned that the ticket price hike could backfire.

“At the current ticket price, you can watch two movies, one Hollywood and one local. But if you increase the price to RM20, movie-goers might just skip local movies altogether.”

Let’s see what one guy commented in NST:

A local production professional said increasing the ticket price for Hollywood movies to RM20 to save the local film industry would not make movie-goers watch local films.

Danny G said the move would only make DVD sellers happy and bring down the cinema industry, which was now enjoying a revival.

“The reason why most local movies are not attracting the crowd is because they are poorly made and lack a good storyline.

“It should be noted that movies by Yasmin Ahmad that have good storylines command a good following among movie-goers.”

Danny said he recently went to watch the Antu Fighter movie and found it so ridiculous, he walked out midway.

“One should not go into production with a weak story just because there is funding, and complain later that the ticket sales are poor. ”

Danny said local movie-makers should improve the quality of their films not by using lots of special effects but by emphasising on a good storyline.

BTW, I read that the three local movies released recently bombed. One of it was the Antu Fighter mentioned above.

So, is a protectionist policy needed to revive or develop our local movie industry? Is it a sign of lack of patriotism from our rakyat? Or are the movies not meeting the exceedingly high standards or tastes of local moviegoers? In terms of storylines, technology, directing, and perhaps acting, I think we are quite lagging in one or more aspects if compared to other countries.

Local movies basically means those catered for the Malay market, thus eliminating nearly 40% of target audience (in Peninsular Malaysia). The market is small, so how many movies can we produce in a year? Is there a big enough field for 20 over local movies in a year?

Now, we have Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Iranian etc. movies being shown as well. These cater for the foreigners and also hard core moviegoers. The market is very diversified, so local movie producers have to work triple hard to succeed. They can’t rely on discriminatory policies on the expense of others. We already suffer a lot from NEP and its offshoots.

This is the age of Astro, bit torrents and pirate DVDs. By putting a higher ticket value, people will look for alternative avenues, and I very much doubt that local movies will be on their minds. Just subscribe to Astro or one of the many Internet service providers.

OK, its easy to criticise, so what’s the solution? I think there should be categories of movies – are we going to develop indies, art/noir, sci-fi/tech, drama/action, horror etc. We shouldn’t kid ourself by targeting all areas. Then, we should set up funds to allow directors to make movies. This fund can be derived from the entertainment industry, global institutions, or CSR from MNCs and GLCs.

But money alone does not guarantee a roaring success. There are many cases stretching from Hollywood to Hong Kong.  We should cultivate local talents – start young in schools, organise competitions. Offer free/discounted viewing for local movies instead of charging more for foreign movies.

And of course, the guidelines on censorship most likely have to be revamped. You can’t have one set of rules for foreign movies and another for local ones. From kissing scenes to bloody attacks by vampires, foreign movies win hands down! If we can’t treat the public as mature and able to make own decision, we might as well close down the local movie industry and move on to other industry.