THE NATIONAL ARTS Academy in Kuala Lumpur isn't usually the sort of place where social taboos are confronted. But that's what happened at a recent weekend film screening. The Big Durian is an experimental documentary - a tongue-in-cheek mingling of fact and fiction about a soldier who ran amok in the Malaysian capital in 1986. It's also a vehicle for raising thorny questions about race relations and political restrictions in the multi- ethnic country.
Far from being hostile, the multi-racial audience seemed to love it. 'That was an eye-opener,' says Fiona Lee, a 23-year-old student, after the screening. 'In Malaysia, there are so few movies, books or whatever that make us look back at history and think.'
Frank portrayals of Malaysia's racial and religious schisms on the big screen are rare when movies such as Daredevil are banned for containing 'unhealthy elements'. But things are changing. Independent films such as The Big Durian have won Malaysia unprecedented attention on the global cinema scene and are subtly changing the way the country navigates its own multi-racial complexities.
A number have won acclaim at international film festivals. Ho Yu Hang's Sanctuary won two awards at the Rotterdam festival and landed the director a movie deal with Andy Lau Tak-wah's incubator project, Focus: First Cuts. Festival curators compared Ho's film to works by the likes of Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien.
'Malaysia is exemplary in the region,' says the Rotterdam festival's programmer, Gertjan Zuilhof. 'The independent film scene is very active and contains a number of very talented filmmakers.'
The Big Durian, shot for M$50,000 (about $100,000) in nine days, was the first Malaysian film to be invited to the Sundance Film Festival. The Village Voice named it one of the best undistributed films of last year in its annual critics' poll. Variety magazine called it 'ambitious' and 'boundary-pushing'.