Façade of the Con

Tartuff, a satire on hypocrisy.

In a town of German lives a government official who is at his very old age. He

is accompanied with a female servant who is only after his wealth.

One day a nephew of the old official paid him a visit. The servant has long
persuaded the official to disgrace that nephew of him, who is actually his one
and only next of kin. The nephew was thrown out of the house. But he had his wits
and disguised as a mobile Polaroid photographer.

To make the uncle come to, he played a movie called Tartuff. The movie tells the
story on Tartuff who wore a virtuous façade conning his own friend, a wealthy man
by the name of Orgon. When Tartuff tried to seduce his wife, Elmire, it was then
that Orgon realized the real mischief of Tartuff.

So was a little of the Tartuff silent-movie, done by German’s renowned director,
Friedrich Wilhelm Munau. The movie was done in 1925 and was adapted from a
story of the same title by a French poet, Moliere.

Moliere wrote the screenplay in 1664, to protest the current situation where King
Louis the XIV was so influenced by the then French Archbishop Paul Phillipe Hardouin
de Beaumont de Perefixe. The on-target satire, Tartuff by Moliere became a
controversy and was banned for quite a while.

The play had such a big impact that the word Tartuff was since then used in the
French and English language to refer to hypocrites.

The rolling of the movie held by the Goethe Institute came as quite an eccentric, for
the appearance of music illustration by Capella Amadeus Ensemble together with
conductor Pierre Oser and pianist Adelaide Simbolon, also two brass instrument
players of the Salamander Big Band; Bonny buntoro and Andriyanto Haryanto.

Capella Amadeus Ensemble played the musical repertoire of the Tartuff movie
composed by Giuseppe Becce in 1924. Oser, a composer and conductor based in
Munich, only had ten days to prepare that night’s show. For the intense groundwork,
even during Easter the members of this group had to make the time to practice.

Ending the roll of that approximately one hour movie, it was written on screen;
How many people have two faces in this country, how many masks are they wearing.
Hoa bout the person next to you? This closing sentence invited laughter along
with contemplations from the audience.