Do You Know How Piala Citra Is Judged?
Jakarta. The list of nominations for the 38th Indonesian Film Festival was announced last week. Do you know how the award – the most prestigious film award in the country, practically Indonesia's Oscars – is judged? Do you know who the judges are, who will decide who win the gilded Piala Citra trophy?
Based on an official list distributed to the media, 20 film associations and communities were involved in selecting the nominees.
These included the Indonesian Film Producers Association (Aprofi), Indonesian Film Directors Club (IFDC), CLC Purbalingga, In-Docs and Boemboe.
Each of these organizations sent five representatives to the Festival Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Festival or FFI) jury committee, headed by director Nia Dinata.
These judges had to have been past Citra winners or nominees.
They were asked to judge the films submitted to FFI in three aspects: "theme, aesthetic quality and professionalism."
All films released between September 2017 and September 2018 were eligible for competition.
In the end, a total of 130 films were seen by the jury committee.
Actor and FFI head Lukman Sardi told reporters on Friday (08/10) the judges' votes were audited by accountancy firm Deloitte.
"We're looking for the best quality films out there. Some categories only have three nominees. This means the others didn't pass muster. Hopefully this [new system] will improve the quality of local films," Lukman said.
Jury committee head Nia Dinata explained the lack of nominees in some categories on an Instagram post on Friday.
She said, "If we've got three nominees with scores of 330, 310 and 315, and then others with scores of 150 or under, the gap is too huge, so we didn't include the latter," Nia said.
On Saturday, Nia posted another picture on Instagram with a caption that explained the whole judging process.
Nia said she supervised the auditing of the votes with Deloitte on Nov. 3-4.
"I decided not to push it. We don't have to have five nominees for each category just to make up the numbers. Let's be realistic," she said.
The ultimate Citra winners will be voted on by 80 FFI members, made up of past winners and nominees since 1955 and nine "independent judges" made up of critics, journalists and human rights activists.
They will vote after seeing all the nominated films in a special screening at the end of this month.
"The Citra nominees and winners should reflect our social landscape, and represent diversity and equality," Nia said on her Instagram post.
The awarding ceremony will take place next month in Jakarta.
As reported in Beritagar, FFI's judging system is no stranger to controversy ever since the festival's first iteration in 1955.
That year, there were two best actors, two best actresses and two best supporting actors.
Reportedly the judges had originally selected winners who were all members of the Perfini studio.
But then the festival selected another batch of winners from rival studio Persari to share the awards.
This was apparently done to placate powerful film mogul Djamaluddin Malik, who founded both Persari and FFI.
In 1967, 1977 and 1984, the festival didn't even have a Best Film.
FFI started to involve associations in selecting its nominees last year, when the jury committee was helmed by director Riri Riza.
This is the first year that accountancy firm Deloitte is involved in auditing the votes.
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