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24 Time Capsule
Singapore
Documentary / HD / English / 70 mins
TAN Pin Pin
Director: TAN Pin Pin
Producer: TAN Pin Pin
HAF Goals: Co-producers, Sales agents, Pre-sales
Budget: US$200,000
Secured Budget: US$200,000
Director’s Filmography:
2013 To Singapore, with Love
2007 Invisible City
2005 Singapore Gaga
The director films Singapore scenes for an imaginary time capsule that will be buried in 2015 and
unearthed in 2065, 50 years later.
Synopsis
If you could put together a time capsule today for
the next generation to uncover 50 years later, what
would you choose to preserve and share? Director
Tan Pin Pin gathers Singapore scenes for a cinematic
imaginary time capsule meant to be buried in 2015,
the year of Singapore’s 50th birthday, and unearthed
in 2065, 50 years later.
While researching my previous film, Invisible City
(2007) about the importance of personal archives,
and the instinct to collect and document, I stumbled
upon the footage of Ivan Polunin. He was a Briton
who lived in Singapore, an amateur cinematographer
who shot a great deal of footage of Singapore in
the 50s and 60s. He shot fishing villages, everyday
market scenes, boat races and many religious
festivals in colour – this is rare for that time for its
prohibitive cost. It was his few minutes documenting
an ordinary street market in the mid 50s that stood
out for me, more than the many reels of religious
festivals that was in his archive. In the scene,
housewives are shopping for food from roadside
hawkers. The scene is suddenly interrupted when
the colonial police swing in, in black vans. The illegal
hawkers scatter off in fright with their carts and
goods. The footage, although familiar, is also very
surreal. I found myself trying to impose my present
day Singapore of shiny skyscrapers, with the “live”
but old moving colour images he had filmed. Were
we ever like that?
For Time Capsule, I hope to document Singapore in
the way Ivan Polunin had done 50-60 years ago. I
hope what I have been filming will inspire the same
curiosity and questions as Polunin’s footage shot so
many decades ago.
Director
Film Festival in 2013 and won Best Director Award
at Dubai International Film Festival, Best Asean
Documentary (Special Mention) at Thailand’s Salaya
International Documentary Festival and Special
Mention at the Freedom Film Festival, Malaysia. She is
currently in production for Time Capsule, a feature
documentary that won the New Talent Feature
Film Grant from Media Development Authority.
Producer
TAN Pin Pin (also director)
Production Company
BFG Media
BFG Media and its predecessor, Point Pictures are
the groundbreaking production and distribution
companies of TAN Pin Pin. BFG Media has had
many firsts in fundraising, production and distribution
aspects of film-making in Singapore. In 2001, it
produced Moving House, the first Discovery Channel
documentary entirely conceptualised and crewed
by Singaporeans. Moving House went on to win
numerous awards. BFG Media also produced and
distributed the award winning Invisible City (2007).
Recent works include The Impossibility of Knowing,
Snow City, Thesaurus and Yangtze Scribbler that
represent commissions from the DMZ International
Film Festival (South Korea), Singapore Biennale, and
the Singapore Memory Project respectively.
TAN Pin Pin
TAN Pin Pin is a Singaporean documentary film
director known for her award – winning portraits of
Singapore and her histories including Moving House
(2001) that records the exhumation of a Singapore
family’s ancestor’s graves. Singapore GaGa (2005) is a
musical portrait of Singapore, and Invisible City (2007)
is about journalists, archaeologists and filmmakers
who are fighting the atrophy of memory to unearth
and preserve oral histories and photo archives. Her
latest film, To Singapore, with Love (2013) is about
Singapore political exiles who have not returned
to Singapore for more than 50 years. The film
received its premiere at the Busan International
Contact
TAN Pin Pin
BFG Media
357B Serangoon Road,
Singapore 218116
Tel: +65-98515227
Email: [email protected]
HONG KONG - ASIA FILM FINANCING FORUM 2015
HONG KONG - ASIA FILM FINANCING FORUM 2015
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Scenes she has chosen include special one-time
events like the opening ceremonies of grand
infrastructural projects like a new expressway and a
new sports stadium as well as nondescript everyday
events such as school assemblies, fire drills and a
neighbourhood mosquito fogging exercise. These
are everyday scenes she personally does not want
to be forgotten. Intercut with these scenes is the
unearthing, in 2015, of an actual time capsule buried
in 1991 (as part of Singapore’s 25th Independence
Day Celebrations) and the burying of a new time
capsule by a Singapore university. By juxtaposing
the contents of actual time capsules from different
eras with images filmed in present day, the viewer
is invited to experience the past, present and future
simultaneously, both through objects as well as
through filmed images.
Shading these scenes is the fact that Singapore is
celebrating her 50th year of independence through
many commemorative events that will take place
throughout 2015. How does one choose what
items to keep and preserve for future generations?
Why does it matter? Why is it important to
remember, for whom is it important? Is there a link
between the personal and the public memories?
These are some of the themes we will explore in
this film.
Director’s Statement
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