In Indonesian there are several words for “souvenir.” One is oleh-oleh: gifts brought back from a trip, often snacks particular to the region visited (tempé crisps from Malang, for instance, or fermented cassava from Purwakarta). Another is cinderamata: keepsake items given away at weddings and even funerals which are frequently of questionable taste and use—a miniature wooden plaque, for instance, engraved with the words “Bagus & Feby Forever”—but, sometimes, at exclusive wedding receptions of only 3,000 close friends for children of the super rich, a Montblanc pen (marred by the words “Bagus & Feby Forever”). A third is tanda-mata, a memento that might be material or immaterial in form. Doea Tanda Mata is a 1985 film by Teguh Karya which I subtitled as Mementoes.
Older friends of Teguh Karya, especially members of Sanggar Teater Populer H.I. who performed in plays at Hotel Indonesia during the period 1961–1972 when Teguh worked as the hotel’s artistic director, called him “Steve.” Born Liem Tjoan Hok in 1937 and given the Christian name “Stefanus” at his baptism, it was in the 1960s when, at the government’s urging, numerous Indonesian families of Chinese descent adopted more “indigenous sounding” names. That is when Teguh changed his baptismal name from Stefanus to Steve and began to call himself “Steve Liem.” Several years later, however, after he switched from stage to screen director and because of further discriminatory pressure, he adopted the name by which he is known today.
Slamet Rahardjo, a co-founder of Teater Populer disliked his buddy’s choice of name. “Sounds like the name of a dry goods store!” he once said to me. In retrospect, however, the alias is an appropriate one for teguh means “steadfast” or “unwavering” while karya is the term for “creative work.” And while Usmar Ismail might be considered the father of the modern Indonesian cinema, then Teguh was definitely his direct heir for he, more than any other film director during the period 1971–1995, was a creative powerhouse and unwavering in his demand for high-quality film productions.
Teguh was not a hack, able to be dictated by Daddy Warbucks film financiers; he was an auteur who demanded perfection, from his first feature film in 1971, the dark and semi-autobiographical Wadjah Seorang Laki-laki (Face of a Man), to his last feature film in 1995, the lighthearted Pacar Ketinggalan Kereta (which I titled, in English, “Prickly Heat”).
Teguh Karya’s films show his love of theater and acting and he launched the careers of many actors who are still active to this day: Slamet Rahardjo, Christine Hakim, Ria Irawan, Ninek L. Karim, and many more. And though a director, in charge of things to his core, Teguh was also very much a team player, forever encouraging his sometimes massive casts and crews to work together to bring out the best in one another. He was a friend to his crew and cast who engendered great loyalty in others, a fact which might help to explain why Sanggar Teater Popular remains active to this day, eighteen years after his death.
If not mistaken, I first met Teguh in 1982 at a film screening at Sinematek, the Indonesian Film Archives, and I believe it was Gufran Dwipayana (“Pak Dipo”), head of the State Film Production Company (PPFN), who introduced us. I had gone there to Sinematek to watch an Usmar Ismail film that I was to subtitle and, as this was a rare opportunity to view that maestro’s work, Teguh and other filmmakers had been invited to the viewing as well.
Teguh had just started production on Di Balik Kelambu (Behind the Mosquito Curtain) and both he and Pak Dipo, who was to provide funding for the film’s post-production work, were looking ahead and planning to have the film subtitled in English. That is where I came in.
Teguh invited me to visit the set of Di Balik Kelambu, which he had erected on the grounds of Teater Populer’s new headquarters on Kebon Pala I, a short distance from my home in Pejompongan. My visit to the set became the first of hundreds that were to follow in the years to come. Over time, I came to love Teguh and count him as a close friend but I first fell in love with his house—which I want to tell you a little about for a good reason.
The house, a century-old mansion, had formerly been the home of the “Kapitan Arab” for Tanah Abang, the Dutch-appointed leader of the community of people of Hadhrami descent who populated that area. The house was a large one of Dutch colonial design with thick stone walls and towering columns at the front on an expansive terrace. With its many rooms, red terracotta stone floors, and twenty foot ceilings, the house was most impressive indeed.
When Teguh and Slamet Rahardjo bought the house it was sitting on a piece of property 800 square meters in size but because the alleys that bounded the property on its eastern and southern sides were no wider than a person’s body—and consequently called gang senggol or “elbow-alleys” because a person was forced to elbow his way through the passages—the first thing that Teguh did was to donate a meter wide strip on those two sides to the community in order to build passageways around the property that could be accessed by motor vehicles. As a result, to this day, this man of Chinese origins continues to be held in high regard in an area of the city that has a reputation for ethnic intolerance.
This is my point: Teguh was very good at giving and his gifts to the community, the city, and the nation were many. The mementoes he left behind following his early death at the age of 64 in 2001 are of a kind that will last forever.
PS: Should you ever get a chance to see the film, Mementoes, and don’t blink during a brief scene at the Wayang Museum which was doubling as a 1930s club house in the film, you will see a much younger me exit the club with a Dutch juffrouw at my side. For that scene, which was just a few seconds in duration, I spent more than 12 hours on the set, during which time I witnessed closely Teguh’s camaraderie with his crew and cast. As tired as we all were that night, because of Teguh, we too remained steadfast in trying to do our creative best.
Caption for photograph: JHM with Teguh at Sanggar Teater Populer in 1984.