Tan Pin Pin
Born 1969 (age 57) · Singapore
Appears in 19 titles

Tan Pin Pin is an award-winning Singapore film director who has spent over two decades chronicling her country’s history, memory and representation in thoughtful and self-reflexive 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 mid-career 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 auteur’s Hou Hsiao Hsien’s City of Sadness. Inspired, she made her first film, Moving House (1996) using borrowed cameras. It is about the exhumation of her great-grandparent’s graves and their remain’s 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 Singapore’s 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 8-week sold-out 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 Singapore’s entry to the Oscars. Meanwhile, To Singapore, with Love (2013), a film about Singapore political exiles was banned by Singapore’s 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.

Filmography

7 Letters
6.5
7 Letters
2015
Director
To Singapore, with Love
6.4
To Singapore, with Love
2013
Director
In Time to Come
5.0
In Time to Come
2017
Director
Singapore GaGa
Singapore GaGa
2005
Director
Invisible City
6.0
Invisible City
2007
Director
North Wind: Broken Time
North Wind: Broken Time
2020
Director
Walk Walk
2023
Director
Rogers Park
2001
Director
Moving House
Moving House
2001
Director
Moving House
Moving House
1996
Director
Crossings: John Woo
Crossings: John Woo
2004
Director
The Impossibility of Knowing
The Impossibility of Knowing
2010
Director
Thesaurus
Thesaurus
2012
Director
Yangtze Scribbler
Yangtze Scribbler
2012
Director
Microwave
Director
Snow City
2011
Director