Mega Mendoeng – Wikipedia

Mega mendoeng ( [the agency) ; EYD: Mega is cloudy ) is a 1942 film in black and white directed by Boen Kim Nam.

Made in the Dutch Eastern Indies, it was produced by Ang Hock Liem for its Union Films and played by RD Soakorno, Oedjang, Boen Sofiati and Soehaena. The story, of which the author’s name did not survive, focuses on two young lovers who, hindered in their love and kept separated by a series of lies, eventually manage to meet in the village of Mega Mendoeng in Bogor.

The film, the last made by the study, was shot simultaneously with Soeara venomous and completed in just three months. He left the cinemas at the beginning of 1942 and remained in theaters until July of that same year. Like all the other productions of the Union Films, it is considered lost.

Raden Koesoema orders his son Winanta to divorce his wife, Retnanningsih, to marry his cousin Fatimah, threatening to deny him if he refuses. Retnaningsih, wanting him to save from any trouble with his father, leaves him and moves from Bandung to Batavia (today’s Jerly), accepting to lead a life in full poverty. In this way, however, it means that Koesema can discredit it before the eyes of Winanta, thicking her with infidelity: the man thus falls in despair and in the end marries Fatimah.

They spend eighteen years: Winanta and Fatimah had a daughter, Koestini, who studies in Batavia. Her education, her grace and beauty attract the attention of many boys, but she returns only the affections of Soedjono, a young supported and refined pharmacist assistant. One of his contemptuous pretenders, Soekatma, decides to ruin their relationship by trusting Winanta that Koestini spends time only behind men, neglecting his studies. Believing these lies, he brings it back to Bandung.

Koestini gets sick and immediately circulates the rumor according to which he died. Upset by the news, Soedjono goes crazy and begins to wander without a destination. However, as guided by an invisible force, he discovers that she is actually alive in a village called Mega Medoeng, near Bogor. Returning in herself, she can finally live happy with her. ^{[first] [2]}

Three sequences of the film, in chronological order

Mega mendoeng It was the latest work of Union Films, a production house based in Batavia managed by Tjoa Ma Tjoen and financed by the founder Ang Hock Liem. ^[3] He was directed by Boen Kim Nam, a sound technician who had never ventured into the direction, nor would he ever play such a role later. ^[4] Announced in September 1941 and made in conjunction with Soeara venomous , in which Boen was a help director of R Hu, ^{[3] [5]} The film was completed in December of that year. ^[6]

Filmed in black and white, it was played by a main cast composed of RD Soekarno, Oedjang, Boen Sofiati (also accredited as Boon Sofiati) ^[7] And Soehaena, while Ratna Djoewita, Ratnasih, Gamari Fadjar and Moasa held secondary roles; All of them came from the most disparate socio-economic contexts. ^[2] Oedjang was with the cinematographic study since the first feature film, The guise of laughter (1940), while Soekarno and Soehaena had also taken part in Soeara venomous . ^{[8] [9]} Sofiati, a theatrical actress who managed his company, had never landed in the cinema. ^{[2] [7]} Although the Union press office had communicated that the work had been carried out according to the conventions and rules of realism and that it was aimed at the most educated spectators, ^[ten] The historian of Indonesian cinema Misbach Yusa Biran hypothesized in his 2009 essay History of Film 1900-1950: Making a Film in Java That this was not true, precisely because of the inclusion of theater actors, who usually entertained the public of the popular class. ^[11]

Mega mendoeng It was the seventh and final film of Union Films. In fact, following the Japanese occupation of the Dutch Eastern Indies, the February 1942 edition of the film magazine The builder and movie process He reported that several studies would move away from the colonial capital of Batavia or would go on a production break. The company in question, although he was making a historic film set in the Giavanian Kingdom of Majapahit entitled Damar Woelan , was one of those who were forcibly closed; ^[twelfth] However, it was never reopened again. ^[13] Soekarno was the only one, among those who had worked on the feature film, to return to work in the film industry in the 1950s, remaining active for at least other twenty years and being mainly accredited as Rendra Karno. ^[14]

The feature film is believed to be lost, given that all the films of the time had been shot on flammable cellulose nitrate films. These were deliberately eliminated by the studies after a fire destroyed a large part of the Produksi warehouse of Film denara, between 1952 and 1953. ^{[15] [16]} Reserving a very pragmatic judgment on the matter, the US visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider suggested that every Indonesian film work created before the 1950s is now to be considered unrecoverable. ^[17] On the contrary, the JB Kris’s cinema historian, in his Indonesian Film Catalog 1926-1995 , reports that several works survived in the archives of the Sinematek Indonesia and colleague Misbach Yusa Biran adds, writing in his essay History of Film 1900-1950: Making a Film in Java In 2009, which were saved by numerous Japanese propaganda films, which escaped the Dutch government’s information service. ^[18]

Annotations

Sources

• ( ID ) Misbach Yusa Biran, History of Film 1900-1950: Making Films in Java , Bamboo E Community Jakarta Arts Council, 2009, ISBN 978-979-3731-58-2.
• ( ID ) Misbach Yusa Biran, Film in the colonial period , in Indonesia in the flow of history: the period of national movement , V, Ministry of Education and Culture, 2012, ISBN 978-979-9226-97-6.
• ( IN ) Karl G. Heider, Indonesian Cinema: National Culture on Screen , University of Hawaii Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-8248-1367-3.
• ( IN ) Christopher A. Woodrich, Ekranisasi Awal: Bringing Novels to The Silver Screen in The Dutch East Indies , Yogyakarta, Gadjah Mada University Press, 2014.