Meeting – Qalima #4: Decolonising Sugar |  Mendekolonisasi Gula | 去殖民糖: The Gula Anau Story (2025) (25 Nov 2025)

The fourth Qalima meeting happened in November. Led by Nuur Aqilah Ali and Syafiq Halim of the Ekosistem Rasa team, our discussions centred around their new film, The Gula Anau Story. This film directed by Joshua Belayan followed the few artisans who still produce this nipah palm sugar that is part of the Brunei’s heritage. Deforestation, rapid urbanisation, and the significant labour required in production has resulted in a slow attribution of people who are interested and able to maintain this art. This has had a domino effect on the food culture, where local dishes that use gula anau are now effectively extinct.

Brunei is geographically located on Borneo island, sandwiched between Malaysian and Indonesian states. The film finds artisans for gula anau with Malaysian names just across the Bruneian border, implicitly pointing toward the arbitrary lines drawn by the national: people and communities follow what the land says, not what distant governments may want. The film’s simple demonstration of border transgression by the nipah palm tree and the technological expertise of sugar tapping reveals to me a human intimacy that reinforces my belief that it is the trees we must recognise and save in order to constitute any forest.

Qadjai site here.