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The Bonnie & Clyde of Indonesia's soccer films
(JP/Hans David Tampubolon)Most people usually avoid working with their spouses, but a few manage to translate the chemistry in their relationships into making great work together
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(JP/Hans David Tampubolon) (JP/Hans David Tampubolon)
(JP/Hans David Tampubolon)
Most people usually avoid working with their spouses, but a few manage to translate the chemistry in their relationships into making great work together.
Director Andibachtiar 'Ucup' Yusuf and scriptwriter Swastika 'Tika' Nohara are one such couple. Together, they have worked on numerous film projects since 2009.
'Our first project together was Romeo and Juliet,' Tika told The Jakarta Post during a recent interview.
Romeo and Juliet was Ucup's feature film debut in 2009 after spending several years working on documentaries and short movies. Based on Shakespeare's classic play, the film positioned it's star-crossed lovers as members of two rival soccer fan clubs ' Persija Jakarta's The Jak and Persib Bandung's Viking.
Ucup said he had initially hesitated to hire Tika as his scriptwriter for Romeo and Juliet.
'We live in the same house and she sleeps right beside me. It just didn't feel right initially,' he said.
However, after a while, Ucup finally decided that his wife was the perfect person.
'She used to be a scriptwriter for television movies. I have never been very good at story structure and plot. She is very good at these things and at times, she also gives a lot of input and content to a story to make it more colorful,' Ucup said.
Tika said Ucup really needed her help in writing proper storylines.
'For him to say that he is not very good in structuring is completely an understatement. He is chaotic in writing plots,' Tika said.
With Tika writing the script, Ucup could concentrate fully on directing and marketing their films. When it comes to marketing their films, Ucup has many different ideas about fully engaging potential viewers with their films.
'I used to work in advertising so I use the knowledge I gained from that to market our films. I know that it is important for viewers or customers to have better engagement with the product. It's that simple,' he said.
In a way, Ucup and Tika complement each other like the legendary bandit couple Bonnie and Clyde, only in much more constructive ways.
Their cooperation continued in 2013 when Ucup made Hari Ini Pasti Menang (Today We Will Win), a movie which won praise for its edgy approach in depicting the reality of the dirty gambling business behind soccer.
'Some people do not like the reality we presented in Hari Ini Pasti Menang. They called us names and all that because they expected to see a movie that glorified Indonesian soccer, but then they were given the harsh reality,' Tika said.
Ucup credited Tika for finding a source who became a major reference for their research in creating the film. 'I completely knew nothing about soccer gambling. I love soccer but I do not gamble. It took me a year to complete the research,' Ucup said.
Tika said that the source was a friend who had become a medium agent for all soccer gamblers in
Jakarta.
'The soccer gambling industry is structured like multi-level marketing. Agents recruit other agents to find gamblers and they receive their payroll every Thursday. This friend has been in the industry for a long time and he introduced us to his major up line in Jakarta. From there, we mapped how the industry worked, who was involved and the structure until the top level in Hong Kong,' Tika said.
In both films, Ucup and Tika criticized Indonesia's social condition, using soccer as the background. Soccer has always been the theme due to Ucup's passion about sport and its culture.
'What happens in soccer also happens in Indonesian society. Our soccer supporters just love to fight one another and in our society, no matter what social class, there is always a reason to fight,' Ucup said.
'It is like what Franz Beckenbauer once said. 'Soccer reflects society. Our current soccer condition is at the very low level, as is our society',' he added.
In 2014, Ucup and Tika worked on another project on soccer but with a different taste to their previous work. The project is the Garuda 19 movie, based on real life events involving the Indonesian U-19 national soccer team that won the ASEAN Football Federation Youth Cup in 2013.
Unlike their previous darker and gritty movies, Garuda 19 features a crystal clear motivation, which Ucup says is 'too sweet'. Apparently, there is a reason behind all this.
'I only control maybe between 60 to 75 percent of the creative for Garuda 19. The rest belongs to Mizan, the production house,' Ucup said. 'This movie is very Mizan-esque. Even the poster is very Mizan-esque. It depicts glorifications and all that.'
Ucup and Tika have worked together in movie projects for five of their nine years of marriage.
'We met in August 2004 during a friend's wedding. We did not know each other back then. I was the MC for the wedding and he tried to approach me by pretending he wanted to sing on the stage,' Tika said.
'He then asked me to go to watch an Alanis Morrisette concert. The concert was actually cancelled and he knew that but he used it as his modus operandi to get to me,' she added.
They began dating and he finally popped the question just a few months later.
'She received a scholarship to London. I couldn't maintain a relationship separated by only a few kilometers between Cempaka Putih and Depok, let alone Jakarta and London. So I proposed to her and she accepted,' he said.
The couple got married in March 2005 and Tika left for London to pursue her studies before returning to Indonesia to start working with Ucup.
For the future, Ucup said that he and Tika would stop making soccer movies for a while.
'I want to make two or three movies that are not related to soccer. My next target is to make an action movie about boxing also known as tarung derajat, traditional full-body contact martial arts. That is a long-term target but the near term, maybe a couple of love stories,' he said.
One movie project the couple have in mind is the adaptation of Tika's novel, titled Papua Berkisah (Papua Stories), about the search for identity of a Papuan girl who grows up in metropolitan Jakarta.
'The novel was initially a movie script in 2008 but no one was interested in financing its production. This time, however, an investor is interested in making a movie of the novel and hopefully it can be included in our future projects,' Tika said.
