Banyak Ayam Banyak Rejeki
Synopsis
Banyak Ayam Banyak Rejeki began as an ill-fated promotional video for Yogyakarta street food icon and polygamist Arjun. During filming, co-director Önar Önarsson, a Swedish graduate student researching local sex rituals, was hit on the head by a large durian. He woke up convinced he was a mixed of Javanese-Arab, accounting for his light skin. To the consternation of co-director Riboet Akbar, Önarsson became erratic, insisting on dramatizing the struggles of Arjun’s wives in a public forum, the “Polygamy Awards.” Arjun was bankrupted, and the project was abandoned for 11 years, until his mysterious second wife took over control.
Schedule
Credits
Riboet Akbar
Riboet Akbar is a former mobile cinema operator and emcee whose thriving entertainment business once dominated the areas of Yogyakarta and Central Java. Wiped out in the late 1980s and early 90s by the spread of television and the exciting new “drilling” dances performed at Dangdut shows, Akbar has since supported himself as an amateur photographer, videographer and multimedia impresario. His specialty is perking up flagging local food businesses with catchy innuendos and sexualized imagery that he guarantees will increase sales of their products. This is his first attempt at an “art” film.
Önar Önarsson
Önar Önarsson was a Swedish graduate student in anthropology, conducting long-term research on gender and power in Java. After a tragic incident with a Durian, Önarsson, a noted cinephile, developed a strange obsession with the director Nya Abbas Akup, proclaiming him the “Marxist-feminist Ingmar Bergman of Indonesia.” Inspired to make similar films, Önar talked local videographer and emcee Riboet Akbar into hiring him. With Önarsson’s “creative” compulsions and Akbar’s experience and drive, their project evolved into something far stranger, and in fact more “anthropological,” than either could have imagined. Önarsson is currently hiding out in Malaysia under the pseudonym “Om Duck.”
