Shirkers comes to shore tomorrow evening (20 Oct) at the Capitol Theatre. Sandi Tan’s
documentary follows the aftermath of a movie (also titled Shirkers) she’d shot together with classmates Jasmine Ng and Sophie
Siddique fresh out of junior college in 1992. The original Shirkers was never completed. As soon as filming wrapped, Sandi’s mentor
and director of the film, Georges Cardona, disappeared with all 70 cans of
footage.
In an email interview
with SINdie, Tan shares about the process of creating Shirkers and how she got involved in making films at a time when hardly anybody did in Singapore.
You recovered the footage for the original Shirkers back
in 2011. What were the main impulses for working on Shirkers the
documentary?
ST: This was a story that I left buried for years, even
decades, and when the boxes of materials were returned to me in 2011-2012, I
was reluctant to re-open this Pandora’s box of long suppressed heartbreak. Also
I was about to publish my novel The Black
Isle (Hachette USA, 2012) and was busy preparing its launch, and didn’t
have the bandwidth to deal with it. I knew that once I opened these boxes, it
would consume my life and become a strange quest that would suck me into a
black hole for years. I wasn’t wrong! So I stacked the boxes as they arrived into one neat
vertical stack in my living room, to be dealt with later…someday. It took three
years before I had the courage and the time to open these Pandora’s boxes up,
and I was right: I was consumed immediately.
It was the story of my secret superhero identity. And
my secret superhero identity was my 18 year old self. How could I resist??
Can you tell us about the research and preparation
involved in making Shirkers?
ST: I see Shirkers (2018) as a kind of a
remake of a film that was never made: I constructed this current film in pretty
much the same spirit in which the original was made--I assembled my tribe,
handpicked from around the world, including live-looping Singaporean singer Weish,
whose voice was sampled by our Israeli composer Ishai Adar, to create his
mesmeric score for the film, Los Angeles sound designer Lawrence Everson and
Canadian cinematographer Iris Ng (who also shot the Netflix series Making
a Murderer and Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell). And in
bare-bones fashion, I edited the film in my garage with Lucas Celler, a young
skateboarder-barista with very little experience, but he had the right can-do
spirit and he understood the DIY punk aesthetic of the project, and it's a
testament to the magic of cinema--and to filmmaking--that a new tribe of Shirkers was
forged, as crazily committed and as brave as the original bunch of Shirkers.
The entire team finally met for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival
this year.
At what point did you decide that the film was completed?
ST: My gut told me it was right, that all the elements were
in the right place. I’m a painstaking perfectionist and I edited for about nine
months in my garage—indeed it was like a birthing—working with two different
editors with different skill-sets, Lucas Celler with whom I worked side-by-side
for most of those months, and then Kimberley Hassett who came in for the final
polish. I was concurrently working with my composer Ishai Adar in Israel via
Skype (who was sampling the voice of Singapore live-looper Weish for our
original score) and my sound designer Lawrence Everson, who I’d been having an
ongoing conversation about sound for almost a year before we began working
together in the Fall of 2017. Ultimately, deadlines like the Sundance deadline
helps—or one might edit forever. I feel we got to a happy state well before the
deadline and we weren’t in a rush to the finish line, which was a great luxury.
As an independent filmmaker, I really believe in the value of planning ahead,
nitpicking, and careful, tireless micromanaging (you may be a pain but it’ll be
worth it to know what’s going on with your own film). The most important thing
is to select the right co-conspirators and have faith in their talents. Give
everyone room to grow as you grow, and it’ll all feel like a terrific
playground. I’m enormously proud of my team.
Have there been any particularly memorable reactions from
the audience so far?
ST: We have repeat viewers—brand new Shirkers! I
have been running into young Americans who have followed the film across
multiple festivals (on different continents, different states!) to see it again
and again. This is extremely rare for a film, let alone a documentary about a
forgotten episode in Singapore. At a full-house outdoor screening at Brooklyn’s
Green-Wood cemetery last month, I met a sweet young couple who loved the film and
told me they were Russian hackers. I haven’t heard from them since—but then
they are probably already living inside my computer!
What inspires the aesthetics of the film?
ST: In the original Shirkers in 1992, I was
obsessed with showing the secret facets of Singapore that few people noticed
(the mannequin shops of Outram Park, the timeless suburban stupor of Siglap,
the family farms of Sembawang) and making them as mythic as the landscapes seen
in an iconic road movies such as Badlands or Paris,
Texas. It was a perverse challenge but I could see that these places were
going to vanish before our eyes if nobody paid attention (and nobody was—all
the glory was going to the skyscrapers and the new secondary school buildings
and mall that looked like giant bathtubs or pencil-sharpeners). I was hugely
influenced by American independent cinema—my heroes were the Coen brothers,
David Lynch and early Tim Burton, as well as the freewheeling feel of the
French New Wave. And I liked the bright palette of Jane Campion’s earlier
films, and in terms of Asian cinema—I loved Wong Kar-Wai’s Days of
Being Wild (still my favorite of his films) and the way he reinvented
the tropics. Georges brought along his obsessions: Paris, Texas and
the cinematography of Nestor Almendros (Days of Heaven).
When did your interest in filmmaking begin?
ST: Since I was nine. But I wanted to make elaborate TV
sagas, I think, with multiple ongoing storylines, like anybody who spent too
much time (into their teens) playing with dollhouses! I always loved movies but
never thought it was a possibility for myself to get involved in filmmaking
until I saw the notice for Georges Cardona’s 16mm filmmaking class at the
Substation, the first of its kind in Singapore. It was the natural thing to do
in the gap months between finishing my ‘A’ Levels at Victoria Junior College
where I did Theatre Studies & Drama, alongside Jasmine Ng and many other
original Shirkers and going to study abroad. My day job then
was as an intern at the Straits Times.
What tips do you have for aspiring filmmakers in
Singapore today?
ST: Be brave, grow a thick hide because the road won’t be
easy. (And if you think it’s easy, you’re probably not very good.) Above all,
persevere, and be patient. Patience is hugely underrated in Singapore. I think
it would also help to have a sense of humor, also hugely underrated in
Singapore!
Sandi Tan was awarded
Best Director in the World Cinema Documentary section of this year’s Sundance Film
Festival for Shirkers. The Singapore
Premiere of Shirkers happens tomorrow
(20 Oct) as part of Singapore Film Society’s 60th Anniversary
celebrations. The film will launch on Netflix on 26 Oct.