Obsession, Lies And Videotape

As A Teenager, Aspiring Filmmaker Sandi Tan (Left) Had A Dream Stolen From Her. Two Decades Later, This Loss Was Turned Into A Documentary – Which Earned Her A Sundance Award. By Clara How

"IT'S a story that screams to be told – I would be a loser if I kept this film in the basement and didn’t do anything about it,” Sandi Tan says over the phone from Los Angeles, where she’s based. “It would mean something to me, Singapore and the rest of the world to share this story, and to tell people not to be afraid if something bad happens to you or your work.” And Sandi, 46, has good reason not to be afraid.

She’s coming off the back of a successful run of her internationally acclaimed documentary, Shirkers. Not only did it nab the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, making her the second Singapore filmmaker to gain recognition at the festival (the first was Her World Young Woman Achiever 2017 filmmaker Kirsten Tan), Shirkers was also acquired by Netflix for global distribution on Oct 26.

Pop Fiction

It’s a Singapore story you couldn’t make up: Girl grows up in a city that’s as small as her dreams are big. Girl meets a strange American (or is he?) man in Singapore who becomes her mentor in all things filmmaking. Girl, only 19, writes a screenplay called Shirkers. He tells her it’s brilliant, encourages her to make the film, and acts as the director. With the help of fellow film enthusiasts, she and her best friends spend their entire 1992 university summer break acting, shooting, producing what would have been Singapore’s first indie film (three years ahead of Eric Khoo’s Mee Pok Man). The young adults return to university abroad, buoyed by their achievement, with reassurances from the mysterious American that he would, in their absence, get going with the footage. He disappears with their film, and they never see him again.