Asian Films Awards; Indonesia's football team; and Southeast Asian Music
Notes On Entertainment
TO THE 18TH ASIAN FILM AWARDS, held last week in Hong Kong where several Southeast Asian films were unlucky not to come away with a prize. Vietnamese director Truong Minh Quý was nominated for Best New Director for Viêt and Nam, a bleak romantic drama about two homosexual coal miners. It remains banned in Vietnam—probably not for the homosexuality but for its less-than-romantic portrayal of the country.
Also disappointing to see no award (for best editing) for Pierre Erwan Guillaume and Rithy Panh for their Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot, a film about journalist Elizabeth Becker’s attempt to interview Khmer Rouge tyrant Pol Pot.
One clear trend is the growing collaboration between Southeast Asian and European cinema, particularly with France. Bothaforementioned films reflect this, as do France’s increasing cultural investments in Asia. Last June, Canal+ Group increased its stake in multi-territory Asian video streamer Viu to 36.8% for a reported $300m. “This investment is a renewed testimony to Canal+’s commitment to develop Asia as one of the group’s growth engines and underlines Canal+’s confidence in Viu and its team,” the French company said in a statement at the time. It’s probable that Canal+ will take a 51% stake before too long.
Although French films grossed an estimated €250.2m in international markets last year, down 11 percent, they took a near-record market share at the French box office. In January, French giants Accor, Vranken-Pommery, and BNP Paribas backed a new three-year fund for promoting French film and TV abroad, managed by Unifrance, which is expanding its Rendez-Vous With French Cinema initiative. I hear they’re planning to focus a lot more on Southeast Asia in the coming years, so watch this space.
I TUNED INTO the Indonesia-Australia football match on Thursday via a (technically legal, if you squint) stream—then it cut out, presumably to spare me. Spoiler, or indeed, not: Indonesia lost 5-1. Their hopes of qualifying for next year’s World Cup in North America are now looking about as plausible as FIFA’s code of ethics. Only the top two teams from their third-round group advance, and Indonesia is already four points behind second-place Australia with three games left. So yes, this was a match they needed to win. It was also the first under the watchful eye of new head coach Patrick Kluivert, who—like many of the players—has an obvious Dutch connection. Indonesia, a former colony, has naturalized a dozen Dutch-born players in recent years. And Kluivert himself? Who had he managed before? That would be Adana Demirspor in Turkey for a grand total of five months in 2023, with a caretaker role for Curaçao.
Southeast Asian football associations have a habit of hiring famous names as managers, although when Cambodia brought in Japanese star Keisuke Honda in 2018, it was quite obviously a soft power move, with Honda as something of a nation ambassador for Cambodia. Nothing against foreign managers. My own country is currently managed by a German. Best in class should always be best in class. The question is, best in class of what?
Here’s an argument that isn’t remotely falsifiable but probably still true: great players make terrible managers unless they’re coaching great players. Mediocre players can coach up and down. Whether he’s the best manager at the moment or not, Pep Guardiola probably couldn’t coach the Indonesian national team to a place in the World Cup. Kluivert probably won’t.
The problem with the Kluiverts or Hondas or anyone who has played football at a very high level and then leveled down (no offense) to manage Cambodia or Vietnam or Indonesia is that they’re essentially switching between two different sports. I once heard a retired Premier League player—not a particularly good one, but lucky enough to have needed to put up a hook in his house to hang some medals—say he’d rather quit early than play in the lower leagues and receive passes to the knee. In other words, it’s a different sport at different levels. Play a five-a-side game with someone significantly better than the rest, and you’ll understand what I mean.
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A REPORT PUBLISHED THIS MONTH by US-based analytics company Luminate—and covered by Nikkei Asia—found that Southeast Asians are increasingly listening to their own country’s music. “The share of homegrown tunes [in Indonesia] in on-demand streaming increased to 35% last year, up 12 percentage points from three years ago, while the share of U.S. tracks dropped 5 points to 26%,” Nikkei reported. In Thailand, local artists went from around 30% in 2021 to almost 50% last year. I assume that European artists would be included in the “other” category, which is infinitesimally small. On a business angle, Nikkei also reported that Consultancy PwC forecasts the Asia music market to grow by about 20% between 2023-2028, reaching $20.8 billion. “The era of the pop music boom in Southeast Asia has only just begun,” it wrapped up. Ask me about Thai political rap or Cambodia’s golden age of the 1960s, and I can muster a semi-coherent opinion. But I’ll be honest: my knowledge of Indonesian or Thai pop was F-minus at best before I read the report this week. Thankfully, and thanks to Spotify’s “Top-50” playlists for different countries, I’d say I’m D-minus now.