About

Known credits:
20
Birthday:
1969-01-01
Place of birth:
Singapore
Website:
Click here

Tan Pin Pin

Overview

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.

Known for

Acting
2018 Singapore Cinema: Between Takes Actor Self N/A
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2010 Sandcastle Actor Doctor 59
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Directing
2023 Walk Walk Directing Director N/A
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2020 North Wind: Broken Time Directing Director N/A
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2017 In Time to Come Directing Director 59
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2015 7 Letters Directing Director 59
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2013 To Singapore, with Love Directing Director 59
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2010 The Impossibility of Knowing Directing Director N/A
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2007 Invisible City Directing Director 59
Average
2005 Singapore GaGa Directing Director 58
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2004 Crossings: John Woo Directing Director N/A
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2001 Rogers Park Directing Director N/A
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2001 Moving House Directing Director N/A
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1996 Moving House Directing Director N/A
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Writing
2013 To Singapore, with Love Writing Writer 59
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2004 Crossings: John Woo Writing Writer N/A
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2001 Moving House Writing Writer N/A
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Production
2019 Unteachable Production Executive Producer N/A
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2004 Crossings: John Woo Production Producer N/A
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Camera
2013 To Singapore, with Love Camera Director of Photography 59
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