Dim Sum Dollies are back! With their hilarious version of the History of Singapore!

Triumphant after a sold-out run last year, the Dollies (and Hossan Leong) will be strutting and singing in the Esplanade Theatre for a second time from 21 to 28 February 2008. So if you have not seen it, do catch them before they disappear!

And if you have seen it, go ahead lah… Dim Sum’s never boring even after the second (and third and fourth) time!

If you want to refresh your memory or are just suckers for spoilers, read the review contributed to citizen historian by Hong Lysa in July 2007

The latest work from Tan Pin Pin Invisible City opens 19 July 2007 with free screenings at NUS followed by a commercial run at The Arts House. Tan Pin Pin, one of Singapore’s best known filmmakers, directed the critically and commercially acclaimed Singapore GaGa as well as the multi award-winning Moving House. She now turns her camera to the subject of memory.

Invisible City chronicles the ways people attempt to leave a mark before they and their histories disappear. From an avid amateur film director trying to preserve his decaying trove of Singapore footage to an intrepid Japanese journalist hunting down Singaporean war veterans, Tan Pin Pin draws out doubts, regrets and the poignantly ordinary moments of these protagonists who attempt immortality. Through their footage and photos rarely seen until now, we begin to perceive faint silhouettes of a City that could have been.

http://invisiblecity.sg

Exclusively at The Arts House

Tickets at $8 (Adults) and $6 (Students with ID)
available from The Arts House Box Office, 1 Old Parliament Lane, Singapore 179429.
Ticketing hotline: +65 6332 6919 (Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat 11am-8pm)

Screenings at The Arts House
22 Jul 4:30 6:00
23 Jul to 25 Jul 7:30 9:00
31 Jul to 3 Aug 7:30
4 Aug 4:30 6:00 7:30
5 Aug 4:30 6:00
7 Aug to 10 Aug 7:30
11 Aug 4:30 6:00 7:30
12 Aug 4:30 6:00

FURTHER INFORMATION
Suryahti Abdul Latiff (Publicist) T: +65 9698 5903 E: watchinvisiblecity@gmail.com
Tan Pin Pin, Point Pictures E: keble@lycos.com

TECHNICAL INFORMATION
60 minutes, shot on DVCam, screening on miniDV • In Mandarin, Japanese and English, with Chinese and English subtitles • Directed & Produced by Tan Pin Pin • Rated PG

 Things left unsaid.

One spark that inspired us to start this project was all the little golden leftovers that got edited out. Sometimes it’s a hilarious anecdote that would have annoyed a then-important person (or paymaster!), or a snippet that didn’t fit the overall thesis and argument. Or a tale just too R-rated for a country with PG-ears.

 Stuff gets edited. We get that. Literally - we get those deleted bits, and find them a place where people can see them.

 So when we appeared in the Straits Times (Chua Hian Hou, 9 June 2007), we thought that we’d write up the stuff that didn’t make the editor’s cut. After all, it was an article on citizen journalism, not re-writing Singapore history.

Introducing the quick guide to Citizen Historian:

1. What we are: A platform for discussing history and heritage,initiated by NUS history post-graduates and alumni.

2. What we cover: Researching history. Forgotten histories. Impressions of history. Exhibition reviews. Book reviews. The people whose profession is history - teachers, curators, journalists, professors, taxi drivers, your gossipy aunt/uncle who knows exactly who cheated who in a mahjong game 10 years ago. And how that cheater went on to become a high-ranking civil servant. (You never know!)

3. Who writes for us: You do. This is about little personal observations, individual curiosities about the past (and present) - so it should be from you. We make our suggestions to make it bigger and connect to a larger audience,  but this is about giving people a chance to make their stories heard.

4. Who should contact us: If you’re the student from Mauritius, wondering why Singapore tears down national landmarks.

If you’re a concerned citizen who has a story to share about the preservation of history and heritage.

If you’re a history student who wants to make a statement on why particular histories are written and others rejected.  

If you’re a history teacher who finally figured out how to get the rugby team to sit through the Elizabeth Choy story. 

If so, come and talk to us.

Our website features a banyan tree for two reasons. One, the Singapore government has often been described as a banyan tree - strong, overpowering, and nothing can grow beneath it. Similarly, history and heritage in Singapore has often been a story told from the top.

In 1991, George Yeo called for a change, calling for civic groups to take root beneath the banyan tree, and make the connection between the grassroots and the treetop. That’s what we’re trying to do - getting other histories to take root and grow strong.

 Secondly, if you’ve been in Singapore for awhile, you know that banyan tree in our picture. You’ve driven past it, walked past it. It’s survived many things - the National Library, the Japanese Occupation and road-widening. It protects the museum that stands beside it. It’s the banyan tree besides the National History Museum of Singapore.

 You’ve always known that it was there. But do you really know about it?

And there it is, a little piece of history hidden in plain sight, that almost never makes the editor’s cut.

The burden of history
May 17th 2007, The Economist print edition
Peter Schrank

JAVIER SOLANA, the European Union’s top foreign-policy honcho, recently offered a neat turn of phrase to explain the importance that Europeans attach to the past. Ponder the phrase “that’s history”, and what it implies on either side of the Atlantic, he suggested. When Americans say something is “history”, they mean it is no longer relevant. When Europeans say the same thing, “they usually mean the opposite”.

Is this mere wordplay? If only. History lies at the heart of many disputes that are causing such angst in today’s EU.

Continue reading…

Ghosts Wail as Cambodians Plunder Killing Field Graves
20th May, 2007. The New York Times
Seth Mydans

SRE LEAV, Cambodia — Researchers are examining a long-unknown killing field in Cambodia with the graves of thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge from the 1970s.

But local villagers found it first. By the time the researchers arrived in early May, some 200 graves had been dug up and the bones scattered through the woods by hundreds of people hunting for jewelry
Continue reading..

Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs
24th May, 2007. The New York Times
Edward Rothstein

PETERSBURG, Ky. — The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.
But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away.
Continue reading..