This documentary depicts four artists from across Malaysia, a multi-ethnic society. It provides a glimpse on the production processes and behind-the-scenes of these artists, who also have fans here in Japan. Each has their own language, ethnic background, and genres, yet they continue to create within the same shared space. As we follow each one, connections between humans and water, history, and memory, the rural and the urban gradually spill out, highlighting the particular characteristics of Malaysian society which lets them strive toward the same goal even when not working together.

“Against this Messy World” is a visually arresting documentary celebrating Malaysian creativity -one that cuts across racial divides as well as different art forms.  At the heart of this engaging panorama on community-based culture are its generous subjects -the Chinese Malaysian experimental musical artist, the Indian Malaysian thespian and performance artist, and a Kampung-based printmaking commune. The work is playful in an organic manner with a storytelling style that allows for many pleasant surprises. It succeeds in projecting the diverse colours of the Malaysian arts and culture scene. But more importantly it presents how each hue contributes to a notion of unity in Diversity.

Malaysia, which forms the backdrop for “Against This Messy World,” is known as a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society, and this documentary features the major ethnic groups and regions of Malaysia. Yii Kah Hoe is a Chinese composer from Sarawak and a performer of the Chinese flute dizi and xiao. Pangrok Sulap is an art collective based in Sabah, Borneo　which works across various fields especially with woodblock prints.

In the documentary, Fuad talks in in English, Yii in Chinese (Mandarin), Jo in English, and Pangrok Sulao in Malay (and in places Kadazandusun), and they all reflect the multilingual nature of Malaysian society. What is interesting is that the conversation with the listener, that is, the director/producer, is in all languages, a notable feature of Malaysian society where people speak more than one.

Although the four artists in the documentary do not meet each other, the link between each of them is smoothly conveyed as shown in the Pangrok Sulap woodblock print in Jo’s room.　Including these four vignettes in the documentary highlights the reality of those regional disparities within Malaysia, which is experience economic development at a national level. Art is not appreciated in rural areas, so people go to urban areas, but there, in the cities, they suffer traffic jams. Rain that is welcomed in rural areas for enriching crops and land can become a disaster in urban areas. Politicians who should be working to close the gap between urban and rural life, jump around like frogs, switching between different partners for their own immediate benefit, buying votes to win elections and trying to silence politicians or activists who criticize them.

The artists are fighting against authority where they are, but domestic issues are linked to global issues. That it wasn’t Magellan who first circumnavigated the world, but Enrique from Malacca -forced to accompany Magellan on his voyage as a slave- reminds us that the world is not dominated by the activities of Westerners, but by those (local people) who supported them which challenges a Western- / development-centric view of the world. Just as a bright landscape can be seen as we come out of the darkness of the tunnel at the end of the documentary, there is the hope that there will be a brighter world that opens up“against this messy world.”