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'Keluarga Cemara' hits million-viewer mark
The popularity of remakes from the 1990s is still going strong, as the movie adaptation of popular 90s drama series Keluarga Cemara (Cemara’s Family) has become the first Indonesian movie to hit the 1 million-viewer mark for 2019.
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Silver screen adaptation: "Keluarga Cemara" (Cemara's Family) is an adaptation of the highly acclaimed 1990s television series of the same name. The series took inspiration from Arswendo Atmowiloto’s short stories published in Hai magazine in the 1980s. (Courtesy of Visinema Pictures /-)
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ince its Jan. 3 premiere, 1,035,634 people have seen Keluarga Cemara (Cemara's Family) in theaters according to data from filmindonesia.or.id.
The trend for nostalgia-driven remakes seems to be the case for fans of Indonesian cinema, as 2018 saw many remakes reaching the 1 million mark, including the chart-topping Dilan 1990 with 6,315,664 viewers as well as horror tribute Suzzanna: Bernapas dalam Kubur (Suzzanna: Breathing in the Grave) listed second with 3,346,185 viewers.
In a press conference celebrating Keluarga Cemara’s milestone, producer Anggia Kharisma expressed gratitude to Indonesian viewers who made the feat possible.
“When I started this film with Angga [producer and Anggia’s husband], we believed the energy we put out would be strengthened by our consistency and Indonesian viewers would be receptive to it,” Anggia said as quoted by kompas.com.
“For me, the Keluarga Cemara movie is very personal. We made the movie for our children and I trust Yandi Laurens’ ability as a director to retain the values from the original.”
First aired on television station RCTI in 1996, 412 episodes were screened in the small screen, making it quite a success by the standards of Indonesian television at that time, which was dominated by romantic soap operas.
Keluarga Cemara originates from the short stories written by renowned author and journalist Arswendo Atmowiloto in Hai magazine in the 1980s. The stories were later published by Gramedia in six titles.
Actress Nirina Zubir, who portrayed Emak (mother) in the movie, said she received many positive comments from moviegoers during the team’s cinema visits.
“We went to a cinema the other day, and there was a family of three who came up to me and suddenly said ‘Mbak, the movie was very good’. It was the father who said that and he also said the three of them cried while holding hands during the movie,” Nirina said as quoted by jatim.tribunnews.com.
