Ibunda - Mother
Indonesian Title Ibunda
English title Mother
Producer Sudwikatmono, R. Sunarso
Year of production 1986
Screenplay Teguh Karya
Cinematography George Kamarullah
Editing B. Benny MS
Production design Benny Benhardi
Sound Zakaria Rasyim
Music Idris Sardi
Cast Tuti Indra Malaon, Niniek L. Karim, Alex Komang, Ria Irawan, Galeb Husin
Production company/World sales
PT Nusantara Film, PT Suptan Film
National library format VHS Video/Colour/98 min.
Set in contemporary Jakarta, Ibunda (Mother ) interweaves two separate problems a widow is facing with her family. Youngest daughter, Fitri, and her boyfriend, Luke, are ostracised by elder daughter, Ida, and her nouveau riche Javanese businessman husband, Gatot, because Luke is Irian Jayan and not Javanese. At the same time elder son, Fikar, has left his wife and child and is living with an actress. The film traces the mother's psychological and moral relations to her still immature family-she is the point where problems intersect or where problems are expected to be solved.
The film uses a conventional melodramatic plot to raise, more or less directly, the question of racial prejudice by Javanese towards people from Irian Jaya, who are nominally equal under Indonesian law. It is interesting that the film should have been received so well in Indonesia, being awarded 9 Citras at the Indonesian Film Festival in 1986.
Ibunda has been praised in the Indonesian press for its control of nuance and its deftness in representing the manners and mentality of the Javanese middle classes, without imposing Western acting styles, behaviour or values. Issues in the film are explored at two levels: in the finely acted, fast moving, naturalistic family scenes, and in the stylistically different scenes of an expressionist folk opera in which Fikar is performing-and which clearly bear some deeper relation to the main story in its mother/son, husband/wife, and mother/infant tableau. The film is exceptionally rich in its handling of filmic, theatrical and musical effects, and includes a very fine performance by Tuti Indra Malaon as the mother, a performance which gained the Piala Citra Award for best actress.
This video release version has been subtitled by SBS Television in Australia.
Availability: Between Three Worlds Video is licensed to sell this film on VHS video to anywhere in the world excluding Indonesia.