Tan Pin Pin

Tan Pin Pin is an awardwinning Singapore film director who has spent over two decades chronicling her countrys history memory and representation in thoughtful and selfreflexive works that have screened theatrically in Singapore and abroad Her works have been invited to key film festivals Berlinale Busan Hot Docs SXSW Visions du Reel and at the Flaherty Seminar Nearer home they have been presented at M Parasite CUHK Rumah Attap Sa Sa Art Projects on Singapore Airlines Jakarta Biennale and on Netflix Her work has been honoured with midcareer retrospectives at RIDM in Montreal Liberation Docfest in Bangladesh and Dok Leipzig Pin Pin started her career in the arts as a photojournalist When video cameras became more affordable she made the leap to the moving image after being moved by Taiwanese auteurs Hou Hsiao Hsiens City of Sadness Inspired she made her first film Moving House 1996 using borrowed cameras It is about the exhumation of her greatgrandparents graves and their remains subsequent move to a columbarium The film got her her first film job as an assistant director for the police drama Triple Nine and latterly a scholarship to study film at Northwestern University USA Her graduation film won a Student Academy Award Upon her return to Singapore she made Singapore GaGa 2005 a film about Singapores soundscape It was described as One of the best films about Singapore by the Straits Times It became the first Singapore documentary to have an 8week soldout theatrical run Meanwhile the citation for the award from Cinema du Reel for Invisible City 2007 her next film reads A witty intellectually challenging essay on history and memory as tools of civil resistance Her short film Pineapple Town 2015 one of seven in the 7 Letters omnibus was Singapores entry to the Oscars Meanwhile To Singapore with Love 2013 a film about Singapore political exiles was banned by Singapores censors for undermining National Security IN TIME TO COME 2017 her next film is an immersive film about Singapore rituals like fire drills and mosquito fogging sessions