In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan and her friends Sophie and Jasmine shot Singapore's first indie-a road movie called "Shirkers"-with their enigmatic American mentor, Georges Cardona. Sandi wrote the script and played the lead, a killer named S. After shooting wrapped, Georges vanished with all the footage! 20 years later, the 16mm cans are recovered in New Orleans, sending Sandi-now a novelist in Los Angeles-on a new personal odyssey across two continents and many media: 16mm, dig... (Full plot summary below)
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In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan and her friends Sophie and Jasmine shot Singapore's first indie-a road movie called "Shirkers"-with their enigmatic American mentor, Georges Cardona. Sandi wrote the script and played the lead, a killer named S. After shooting wrapped, Georges vanished with all the footage! 20 years later, the 16mm cans are recovered in New Orleans, sending Sandi-now a novelist in Los Angeles-on a new personal odyssey across two continents and many media: 16mm, digital, Hi8, Super8, slides, animation and handwritten letters. A kaleidoscopic punk rock ghost story!
Leave your thoughts about Shirkers.
| RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloIn her search for closure to this bizarre chapter in her life, Tan recreates Cardona’s steps to make sense of why he would steal the teens’ work. Her journey takes several dark turns, which she captures in a crisp digital format which contrasts nicely against the dreamy footage of the original “Shirkers,” which was its own twisted take on melodrama, surrealism and existentialism. |
| Film Comment MagazineJonathan RomneyOn one level, Shirkers is a memoir - a fond, self-deprecating mulling-over of Tan's crazy, inspired, partly embarrassing but furiously creative youth. |
| New YorkerRichard BrodyAn exemplary work of counter-lives and alternative histories, intimate self-portraiture and cultural reconstruction, hard-won empathy and painful reconciliation. |
| The GuardianCharlie PhillipsThis is so much more than a film about a film, it’s about young women breaking the rules set in a conservative country - the process of doing that was a lot more powerful than finishing the actual film. |
| Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonA movie that maintains its forward momentum all the while it's looking back. |
| Battleship PretensionDavid BaxTan's joy in cinema is apparent in Shirkers' sometimes collage-like construction. Strips of home movies, found footage and clips from the movie that never was run across the screen, sometimes backwards and upside down. |
| Consequence of SoundDominick Suzanne-MayerIt’s about how reality invades our dreams, and how the people we trust teach us to be less trusting as we get older. Tan plays these themes out with a rare emotional honesty, never allowing the fact that it’s a deeply personal work to prevent her from indicting herself alongside any of the other key players involved. |
| Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangA knotty detective yarn, a funny valentine to Singapore and one of the year’s most ardent expressions of movie love, it tells a story of cinematic theft, and in the process, becomes an entrancing feat of cinematic reclamation. |
| NOW TorontoKevin RitchieShirkers is a movie about dashed dreams and the meaningfulness of closure, but it's the opposite of bitter or rueful. |
| TheWrapApril WolfeLike another breakout independent film this year, “The Tale,” Tan’s documentary attempts to portray her own narrative with objectivity and distance, but she discovers along the way that such a thing may not be possible, that memories will wait years or decades to snag you in their truths. |
