Jakarta – Deputy Education and Culture Minister for Culture Wiendu Nuryanti is lambasting the nation's film industry for making horror movies and comedies that tarnish the nation's image abroad.

"Those movies make other countries perceive our country as an uncivilized nation because of our inability to produce good movies," she told reporters at a press conference in Jakarta on Friday.

According to Nunus Supardi, the deputy chairman of the Film Censorship Board (LSF), Indonesian cinema was in a poor state due to the miniscule number of local movies that were made based on the richness of the nation's local and traditional cultures.

"We should learn from other countries such as India with Bollywood, the US with Hollywood and even Nigeria, with its burgeoning Nollywood," he said.

Nunus said that 56 percent of the movies produced by those three nations used local languages and portrayed local cultures.

To encourage the production of "quality" Indonesian film, the ministry is holding its Indonesian Film Appreciation (AFI) competition, Wiendu said as quoted by kompas.com on Saturday.

"We want the AFI to become an arena for filmmakers to tell stories that promote tolerance, diversity, local wisdom and nationalism," he said. Filmmakers can submit their films and scripts that were completed within the last two years. (han/swd)