Indonesian martial arts to those practised by the Tionghoa community of the Indonesian archipelago. Kuntao has a long history in the region dating back to ancient times. Such has been the influence between kuntao and pencak silat that the terms are used interchangeably in some regions. Every Chinese community in Indonesia either has or historically had some style of kuntao, but they were not taught openly until the latter half of the 20th century. Northern and southern Chinese martial arts are represented in kuntao, both from the external and internal schools. Some systems were directly imported from China and underwent little or no
Silat are now considered generally poor depictions of the art. However, silat became increasingly prominent in Indonesian movies during the 70s, resulting in more professional and authentic depictions of the art in both historical films as well as action movies. Indonesian action stars Ratno Timoer and Advent Bangun were famous for 80s silat films such as "The Devil's Sword" and "Malaikat Bayangan". In Malaysia on the other hand, silat became increasingly rare on-screen during the subsequent decades. After the year 2000, silat was featured to varying degrees of importance in popular Malay movies such as "Jiwa Taiko", "Gong", "KL Gangster", "Pontianak