Coming Soon
SHIRKERS
2018
Director
Sandi Tan
Starring
Sandi Tan
Jasmine Ng Kin Kia
Sophia Siddique Harvey
Philip Cheah
Stephen Tyler
Georges Cardona
Runtime
96 MINUTES
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The story of SHIRKERS is one of a search for lost time.
In 1992, 19-year-old Singaporean rebel filmmaker Sandi Tan devised, wrote, and starred in an independent feature called “SHIRKERS”. Under the direction and mentorship of her enthusiastic yet elusive film instructor Georges Cardona, Tan and her friends, scraped together with a meager budget Singapore's first road movie. The title was inspired by Tan’s idea that in life, there were people who were neither movers nor shakers, but shirkers—those who evade responsibility and duty, escaping the confines of society. Inspired in part by J.D. Salinger's Catcher and the Rye, it starred Tan as S., a murderer and kidnapper who used a colorful hand-made boardgame on a mysterious mission to save children. “SHIRKERS” was a highly anticipated shock to the country’s film world that would never come to fruition. When shooting wrapped, Cardona stole the film and vanished.
In 2011 Tan recovered her 70 reels of footage upon Cardona’s death—but, tragically, without the sound recordings. With no recourse for reclaiming the reels, “SHIRKERS” lingered on for Tan as a phantom limb until she decided to resuscitate what was left. Tan’s 2018 documentary of the same title as the incomplete film, SHIRKERS, collages together the luminous footage from her original feature with personal archival material, entrancing sound design, and contemporary interviews with friends and collaborators to tell the story of the stolen film.
Each of the recovered reels represent months of labor, and were the culmination of an entire youth and childhood spent dreaming, writing, and making art in a gutsy, non-conformist ethic. There’s no simple calculation for what happens when this material disappears. The cultural impact “SHIRKERS” had on Singapore, the film movements it inspired, the influence it exerted, the community it fostered—all these things belong to another world, humming tantalizingly beyond an elusive barrier parallel to our own.
In 1992, 19-year-old Singaporean rebel filmmaker Sandi Tan devised, wrote, and starred in an independent feature called “SHIRKERS”. Under the direction and mentorship of her enthusiastic yet elusive film instructor Georges Cardona, Tan and her friends, scraped together with a meager budget Singapore's first road movie. The title was inspired by Tan’s idea that in life, there were people who were neither movers nor shakers, but shirkers—those who evade responsibility and duty, escaping the confines of society. Inspired in part by J.D. Salinger's Catcher and the Rye, it starred Tan as S., a murderer and kidnapper who used a colorful hand-made boardgame on a mysterious mission to save children. “SHIRKERS” was a highly anticipated shock to the country’s film world that would never come to fruition. When shooting wrapped, Cardona stole the film and vanished.
In 2011 Tan recovered her 70 reels of footage upon Cardona’s death—but, tragically, without the sound recordings. With no recourse for reclaiming the reels, “SHIRKERS” lingered on for Tan as a phantom limb until she decided to resuscitate what was left. Tan’s 2018 documentary of the same title as the incomplete film, SHIRKERS, collages together the luminous footage from her original feature with personal archival material, entrancing sound design, and contemporary interviews with friends and collaborators to tell the story of the stolen film.
Each of the recovered reels represent months of labor, and were the culmination of an entire youth and childhood spent dreaming, writing, and making art in a gutsy, non-conformist ethic. There’s no simple calculation for what happens when this material disappears. The cultural impact “SHIRKERS” had on Singapore, the film movements it inspired, the influence it exerted, the community it fostered—all these things belong to another world, humming tantalizingly beyond an elusive barrier parallel to our own.