This film looks at the legacy of Malaysia’s “Chinese New Villages”, and their connection to Malaysia’s ongoing quest for a more open democracy today. The new villages were resettlement camps for Malaysian peasants in the 1950s. The British military created the camps as part of an effort to quash a guerilla insurgency by armed communist fighters who had originally banded together to resist the Japanese occupation. The heavily guarded camps were used to separate peasants from the communist fighters, who were largely based in rural areas.