In their December 1999 Millennium issue, Time Magazine predicted that film/movies will be one of the most important and profitable commodities of the 21st century. As proven film industries worldwide are currently enjoying the increase in terms of ticket sales and number of films produced with Bollywood and Hollywood leading the list. On the other hand, the Malaysian film industry is still struggling to find its market and audience.

Malaysian movies revolves around a small film industry that dates back to the 1930s. At present, Malaysia produces about 15 feature films annually. It’s started in Jalan Ampas, Singapore and later in the late sixties moved to the Merdeka Studio in Kuala Lumpur.

Whenever we ask of the reasons to why our film industry is still going nowhere, three recurring answers will usually crop up. The extremely popular answers are:

1.  Malaysian filmmakers should make films that our audience would love to see. They should not concentrate on making ‘arty’ and high quality films, stick to simple comedies and love stories.

It is commonly agreed here that ‘arty’ and ‘high quality’ films won’t make any money and the audience are not interested in watching them. I totally disagree for it is universally proven that quality films are big money makers.

If we look at the top 10 list of the highest grossing films of all time, the number one movie is Titanic directed by James Cameron. Titanic won 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay and it grossed US$1.8 billion worldwide. Second on the list is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King directed by Peter Jackson which also won 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and grossed USD1.1billion worldwide.

The list goes on with films like Star Wars: A New Hope that won 7 Academy Awards in 1978. The low budgeted Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino that won the Palm d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and earned US$212.9 million worldwide and Godfather directed by Francis Ford Coppola which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the highest grossing film in 1972, earned US$133 million worldwide.

These facts proved that the quality of a movie will not affect its commercial success.


2.  The limited market for our films.

Again, I will have to disagree because according to current statistics, the number of Malay and Indonesian language speaking people is 260 million worldwide. That is more than enough people in order for our film industry to prosper commercially. Australia for example has a current population of 22 million which is lower than our 27 million and yet through film director’s Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock in 1975, and the international recognition from Gallipoli and George Miller’s Mad Max Trilogy’s made Australia among the biggest film industries in the world.

This has proven that quality with the support of a great marketing strategy and multilateral agreements between countries (especially among those who speak the same languages) will contribute to the development of a particular film industry.


3. The lack of support from our film associations to our production crews and creative artists.

This is the third and final reason and the one that I’m agreeing with where there are no proper move to determine minimum wages for our production and creative crews. And for writers, directors and creators there are no such thing as royalty payment for their intellectual properties. We seriously need strong organisations like the Screenwriters Guild of America that can fight for the rights of our screenwriters and the same goes for the other fields of filmmaking.

I guess certain moves and actions are needed in order to further improve and develop our film industry in its creativity, quality and innovation as oppose to ‘creative excuses’ we get time after time in order to cover our weaknesses in countering these problems. The lack of creative talents has never been our problem since the beginning of the industry; it’s the lack of management and administrative talent that has been keeping our film industry from reaching its full potential.

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