Description

To Singapore, With Love is a love letter to the country. Director Tan Pin Pin attends a funeral in the hills of southern Thailand and a family reunion in Malaysia, and later goes for a drive through the English countryside as she searches for different generations of Singaporean political exiles who have not been able to come home. Some were activists or student leaders, others were card-carrying communists – all fled Singapore from the 1960s to 1980s to escape the threat of detention without trial carried out by the British colonial authorities, and later, the independent Singapore government. Some have not returned for fifty years and yet still long for the Singapore of their dreams. As they recount their lives, we see a city-state that could have been.

The film explores this sense of loss: their personal loss, but also the loss to Singapore herself. Contemporary Singapore has been shaped by their absence. Seen as a model for urban development and success in a globalized world, the city-state celebrates its fiftieth year of independence in 2015. Yet, amid the fanfare and celebrations, its official history is very much a contested terrain. The government has banned this film from all public screenings, saying that “undermines national security.” Singaporeans, however, have resorted to crossing into Malaysia for screenings there, and its overseas communities and international film festivals have held screenings of the film in Asia, Europe and North America. This is To Singapore, With Love’s first public screening in Canada.

Tan Pin Pin’s films have focused on Singapore, its histories and its limits. They have screened widely in Singapore and internationally at Berlinale, Busan, Cinema du Reel, Visions du Reel, Rotterdam, MOMA and at the Flaherty Seminar as well as on the Discovery Channel. In Singapore, they have received sold- out theatrical screenings, toured schools and been acquired by Singapore Airlines for their in-flight entertainment services. Pin Pin has won or been nominated for more than 20 awards. The citation from Cinema du Reel for Invisible City (2007) described it as “A witty, intellectually challenging essay on history and memory as tools of civil resistance”. Pin Pin’s thesis film Moving House (2001), won the Student Academy Award for Best Documentary. Pin Pin is also a co-founder of filmcommunitysg, a community of independent filmmakers. She was until recently on the Board of The Substation Arts Centre and the National Archives of Singapore.