20th New York Asian Film Festival

Aug 6-22, 2021

Photo: Courtesy of 13 Little Pictures

U.S. Premiere

Tiong Bahru Social Club

For his 30th birthday, Ah Bee’s mom gifts him a membership to the Tiong Bahru Social Club, a planned community of pastels and positivity dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. Yet is this a realistic goal that a prefab microcosm of society built on algorithms can safely achieve? While Ah Bee initially conforms to the club’s homogenized rules of conduct, genuine thoughts and emotions begin to seep through, and he finds himself questioning the group ideal. Writer-director Tan Bee Thiam’s insightfully whimsical world-building posits deep existential questions against a cheerily inventive background, where the creeping shadow of artificiality may in fact point to enlightenment.

Director: Tan Bee Thiam
Cast: Thomas Pang, Goh Guat Kian, Jalyn Han
Languages: English, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay, Tamil with English subtitles
2020; 88 min.

SCHEDULE:

Saturday August 7, 6:30pm
Film at Lincoln Center

AVAILABLE: Aug 7, 6:30 PM - Aug 7, 8:30 PM

Sunday August 8, 6:00pm
Film at Lincoln Center's Virtual Cinema

AVAILABLE: Aug 8, 6:00 PM - Aug 13, 6:00 PM

Thomas Pang
彭祖耀

Thomas Pang is a stage and screen actor of Filipino and Chinese descent. Having studied Acting in both East and West, Pang brings his cross-cultural experience to performances and productions that spotlight Asian people caught between identities. He feels very lucky to be in the profession and seeks to contribute to the growth of contemporary Southeast Asian performance. Thomas was nominated Best Actor at the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards in 2016 and 2017, and won the Best Actor award in 2018. Tiong Bahru Social Club is his first lead role in a feature film. He is currently in his second year at the Yale School of Drama.