Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional party ruled uninterruptedly from 1957, when the country gained its independence, until 2018, the year they lost the elections and a new government was appointed for the first time in 61 years. At this turning point in Malaysia’s history, artist Mark Teh takes a look at his country’s past. With a hybrid team of journalists, artists and activists, he turns his attention to the unfulfilled revolution of Malaysia’s exiled communist party. Footage of an unfinished documentary seeking out the old communist fighters in the jungle 40 years later brings us in direct contact with this tragic history. This contrasts sharply with how the previous governments made this history invisible in the history books. With the appointment of the new government, a debate about the country’s history is raging and this momentum is being seized to write a new manual about the history of the twentieth century. How do we draw lessons from a past full of blind spots and forgotten tragedies with censored episodes? How do we write together the plural future of the new Malaysia?

Confronted with the SARS-CoV-2 crisis, we had to cancel this project