PETALING JAYA, Feb 23 — Is it true that Terengganu men are lazy as portrayed by Abdullah Munshi who wrote Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah (The Story of Abdullah’s Voyage) when he visited the east coast in 1838?

The question is one that movie maker Amir Muhammad, better known as a book publisher behind the Fixi label today, tried to answer in his latest documentary Pelayaran ke Terengganu (Voyage to Terengganu).

To see for himself, Amir visited Terengganu in December 2015 together with state native Badrul Hisham Ismail who is also the director of his new film. It was also Amir’s first time in the state.

"What we are trying to convey is a different perspective from the tales,” Amir said in a discussion after the recent screening of the documentary in Kota Damansara.

"As example Munshi’s sentence stated that Terengganu men were lazy, did not like to work, but in our travel to the market, it was full of men,” he added.

One of the country’s best known pre-Independence Malay authors of the 19th century had, in his book on the region, described seeing the people in Terengganu mired in poverty, noting that their men had a "lazy” and "slipshod” attitude.

"Therefore their women worked and took care of the shops, hawking and laboured to make a living; but the men were all lazy, just eating, sleeping and repairing weapons, that’s what the people in the state did,” Abdullah wrote.

Despite finding clear lifestyle differences between the present era and then, Amir sees the 19th-century Abdullah’s writings — regarded as the first examples of Malay journalism — as still relevant in the 21st-century.

"Some things are different, some are still the same; most of it is different but there are similarities, so it depends on viewers to decide if there have been changes or not,” Amir, 45, told ProjekMMO, Malay Mail Online’s sister publication in Bahasa Malaysia.

He hopes the documentary will inspire curiosity among its audience to find out more about literature and culture instead of just accepting wholly what is presented to them.

"We want people to be curious about literature and about their environment. If a person wants to know more or succeeds in hearing a new viewpoint, to me that’s okay,” Amir said.

The 62-minute long documentary that has been screened at film festivals in Singapore and Jakarta marks Amir’s return to the movies since 2009.

The controversial movie maker’s past two films about Malaya’s communist guerrilla fighters, Lelaki Komunis Terakhir (The Last Communist) in 2006 and Apa Khabar Orang Kampung (Hello Villagers) in 2007, were both banned here.

Amir who directed Malay horror Susuk (Implant) in 2008, admitted that documentaries were easier to make compared to fictional tales due to communication issues with the actors.

"I had fun [in Terengganu] because I do not like to work too hard, the team must be relaxed, in such an atmosphere then can produce. It must be light, if too heavy, I’m not interested,” he said.