You can cross the Republic of Singapore, which spun off from Malaysia in 1965 to become an independent state, in just an hour. Malay is the national language, whilst the vehicular, business and administrative language is English but most of the 4.5 million inhabitants speak Singlish. Some words are different from normal English, with pronunciation strongly influenced by Chinese and Malay, but also by Portuguese. That means the vocabulary and grammar of one language are constantly spilling over into another.¹ The film »Invisible City« by Tan Pin Pin seems to be grounded in a similar transgression.

In an accompanying text the director describes the »city that could have been« as the atrophy of memory ². Even the start of her multiply fragmented work of memory, shown for the first time in Europe at the Berlin Film Festival, doesn’t really get off the ground. The time code in the image is irritating, the projector rattles away, beeping sounds are audible when the reel is changed, along with a dull buzz, whilst the historical scenes unfurl in slow motion. The film takes umbrage at the perfection and cleanliness of the city, the historical failure is preserved. Tan’s film is the product of a lengthy montage process³, which attempts to rescue apparently inaccessible material.

»Watch out for mines,« says the young archaeologist Lim Chen Sian with a smile during a hike through the jungle. He is one of four researchers in the republic studying ancient history. The camera moves past overgrown bunkers at what was formerly Fort Serapong on the isle of Sentosa, just off the coast. Small lumps of earth are sifted through plastic kitchen sieves. The rubbish, so they say, is »most sexy«. A Cola bottle is measured, photographed and listed. Rusty nails lie on a newspaper spread in a pannier, scattered across the headline »Technology at its best«.⁴

During the Second World War the Japanese used the island as a camp for British and Australian soldiers. Now Sentosa is a top tourist attraction with 5 million visitors a year. A bulldozer moulds a golf course landscape with palms and artificial lakes right next to the sea. Looking through the lens across the green reveals how close the high-rises have crept already. »If we don’t leave a tape behind, does it mean that this event never happened?«, wonders the archaeologist, drawing a line between his work and the video interview. Is the present already history in a city with such a short life-span?

[b]Brain upload[/b]
A man, still young, lies down on a mattress on the beach, conceals himself with a cloth and whips out his camera equipped with a telephoto lens. Shots of mangrove groves, indigenous villages, houses built on stilts by the sea. »I know that you just had brain surgery«, as we hear the young director say whilst talking with biologist Ivan Polunin. In 1951 he climbed on board a boat for the first time in order to investigate the diseases affecting the indigenous population for Malaysia University’s Department of Social Medicine. »Okay, I’ll tell you in detail …« Abruptly his memory fails him and he gazes into emptiness.
Polunin filmed in colour, as shades of colour are of crucial importance when diagnosing skin diseases. For the BBC he later shot the film »Paradise in the Mud« about the Malay nomadic group Orang Seletar, who lived in the marshes around Singapore. By 2018 the »Seletar Aerospace Park« is planned here for the booming aviation industry, in order to strengthen Singapore’s role as a global hub.

Remembering is extremely hard work for Polunin. »But I like to unload my brain. Into this machine.« The numerous rusty film canisters together are kept in order on a shelf by his carefully devised organisational system. In the workshop he transfers his film rolls onto 28-HD videotape using hybrid apparatus made up of a projector and a video camera. Meanwhile he gives a live commentary on the tapes: »This mike is to record whatever comes into my mind«, he grins. And why the comments? »What the hell is it all about? I can’t even remember myself – how can anybody else?« Will he donate the collective work of memory to a national archive? »No, it will go to the girls.« So the archive will stay in private hands – in a state that keeps history under control.⁵ The electronic time-stamp of his digital camera acts as a kind of anti-copying device protecting the copyright.

»I don’t want to complain about it any longer«, says Han Tan Juan, but his expression conveys a different message. He shows photos of a razzia spread like playing cards on a table. Pupils in school uniform lower their heads as they are filmed for intelligence purposes by soldiers in British army uniform. In 1956 many trade union members were arrested and Chinese schools were closed down. »Tok, tok«, Han drily repeats the sound of the gas grenades hailing down on the bodies.

The 65-year-old cultural studies expert is standing between rows of new buildings with the young historian Chan Cheow Thia. »This passageway wasn’t so wide back then«, as he explains on the spot. In those days you could hear the songs from the Communist Party Headquarters across the road in the Sino-English Catholic School. »Students in the Chinese schools were demonised in the 1950s and viewed as rogues«. Then we hear his voice off-screen singing the revolutionary songs.

»I think that physical experience does something to a person.« The interviewer is standing on the spot, now with a different eyewitness who saw the historical events first-hand. Why didn’t he publish the photos? »There’s a Chinese proverb: if you’re bitten by a snake once, then you fear ropes for the next ten years.« Would it be OK to use the photos in the film? »The Department for Internal Security will call us in for an interrogation if there are problems. To put it nicely, we call this: having a cup of tea together.« Limited press freedom and censorship are always with filmmakers in Singapore due to the Censorship Review Committee’s Film Act, with the threat of two year’s imprisonment as a possible penalty.

»History is written by winners and losers alike«, says Han at a lecture high above the metropolis. But »what I said today fell on deaf ears«, he opined afterwards. How would you rewrite our history books, asks the director. »If we were like the British pupils, would there be a Republic of Singapore?«

Viewed from the DHL balloon, there are almost no more buildings with a past in the »Invisible City«. Whilst Singapore faced mass unemployment in 1965, and housing, farmland and raw materials were all in short supply, in just one generation the tiger state had made a great leap forward to become an industrialised nation. »And all the important events happened after that. But there were things before that too«, states the director and seeks to paint a more pluralistic picture than the official image. Singapore is one of the most highly privatised economies in the world. In the 1960s satellite towns forged their way out into the rain forest. Dubai took the tropical metropolis as a role model. History comes later.

Tan Pin Pin, Invisible City (Bei wang lu), Singapore, 2007, 60 min, Mandarin, Japanese and English with English and Chinese subtitles; http://invisiblecity.sg

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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