A vital and deeply humane documentary about memory, exile, and the costs of political conviction, Pin Pin’s Singapore-banned film reminds us that history does not disappear simply because it has been redacted.
Review #3,084
Dir. Tan Pin Pin
2013 | Singapore | Documentary | 70min | 1.85:1 | English, Malay & Mandarin
Refused Classification – would normally be PG13 for some mature themes
Cast: –
Plot: Tan Pin Pin employs a strictly external perspective for this portrait of her hometown, the tropical economic powerhouse of Singapore, interviewing political exiles in London, Thailand and Malaysia, who are to this day unable to return home.
Awards: Won Asian Cinema Fund (Busan); Official Selection (Berlinale)
Distributor/Source: –
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Redacted History of Singapore; Political Exiles
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream or Arthouse
Viewed: YouTube
Spoilers: No
Singapore can be explained through two sides of the same page—on one hand, it looks picture-perfect, like a touristy postcard in a gift shop; on the other, entire lines of text have been aggressively redacted.
To Singapore, with Love, unceremoniously banned in its eponymous home country, is about that other side and the receding waves of the other shore. Why receding? Because the profiles featured here—Singaporeans who fled decades ago out of a very real fear of political persecution—are now mostly silver-haired.
They still harbour the fading dream of returning home to their families; at the same time, they have built new families and new lives elsewhere, whether in Malaysia, Thailand, the UK, or beyond.
Directed by Tan Pin Pin, one of Singapore’s most respected documentarians, To Singapore, with Love charts the lives of these exiled figures, who tell us more about those oppressive years in the 1960s and 1970s, when political activism—or even associations with the Communists—could very well mean detention without trial.
Our government has historically had little patience for dissent or alternative voices; they could subdue anyone deemed “problematic” with some ink on paper—well, after all, the pen is mightier than the sword.
“We long to go back to Singapore. We are Singaporeans.”
While we are a more open society today, with a somewhat greater tolerance for a wider range of political discourse (so long as it remains within our infamous OB markers, of course), the country is still plagued by what I suppose is a kind of historical shame lying invisibly dormant.
It’s like the stealthy chickenpox virus contracted in childhood that could later return as shingles. The government doesn’t want those nasty shingles rearing their ugly heads, but the “virus” remains, whether they like it or not.
To Singapore, with Love may well be Pin Pin’s most important work, and there is so much to learn about the compromises and sacrifices of the film’s subjects.
They don’t seem like the disruptive villains who were vilified in the press; in fact, one could argue that they are some of the most mentally strong Singaporeans we can come to know, even as they continue to suffer the consequences of their actions.
This would make a great double-bill with Daniel Hui’s similarly banned Small Hours of the Night (2024).
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 