Singapore International Film Festival 2025

HISTORICAL

(For example, the period in time in which a film was created ● The era or cultural movement depicted in the film ● The events or notable historical figures depicted in the film)

• ECONOMIC • GEOGRAPHICAL • HISTORICAL • INSTITUTIONAL • POLITICAL • SOCIAL • TECHNOLOGICAL

80km/h (2003) - Tan Pin Pin 陈彬彬How long does it take to drive across Singapore at a constant speed of 80kmh? I traverse the country in one long take. I start the camera rolling at an eastern point (the steeple of Changi Airport) and stop recording at a western point (Tuas Checkpoint). With no cuts, I document every inch of the c

For film-maker Tan Pin Pin, “Singapore jumped from Third World to First World in the years I grew up, the post-independence years of the 70s and 80s. Its development is nowhere more pronounced than in the speed in which buildings are demolished and built over. Growing up, I felt I was standing on soft ground.”

The product of this sentiment, Tan’s 80km/h, is a single-take video shot from the passenger’s seat of a car as it dissects the country at 80kmh along the Pan Island Expressway (PIE). A cartographic ritual henceforth to be repeated once every three years, Tan’s project promises to document the same cross-section of the country over a period of time.

In some ways, it is a piece that is already 30 years too late. A banal series of well-manicured trees, factories, schools, and block after block of government flats, 80km/h captures a Singapore that is unlikely to experience many more dramatic changes.

Yet it is perhaps in this lament that the piece works best. The artist’s desire to “obsessively document” originated in a developing Singapore that no longer exists.

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