At some times in our lives, most of us will have had a dream of becoming a film star, making a film or writing a screenplay or novel. Sadly, whist youthful fantasies are sometimes played-out on a smaller level, the majority don’t even get passed the pre-planning stage. At the age of 16, a Singapore schoolgirl had the opportunity to live her dream and took it. However, what should have been something special eventually turned into a strange nightmare. Sandi Tan new film tells her bizarre and mysterious story of Shirkers.
Tan is an enthusiastic and imaginative film student. Encouraged by her enigmatic ‘American’ film tutor Georges Cardona, she has written her first film, Shirkers. Along with her best friends Jasmine Ng and Sophia Siddique, she assembles a rag-tag collection of amateur crew and actors and shooting begins in earnest. Georges directs and Tan stars as a mysterious killer called ‘S’, but things don’t exactly go to plan.
Shirkers is a wild and wonderful descent into the unfettered mind of a teenage girl. Decades after the film wrapped, Tan tracks down her fellow partners in crime to relive the weird and extraordinary story. There are no real words to describe the oddity that would have been the feature film Shirkers. It had all the makings and hallmarks of becoming an oddball cult classic. Shirkers combines an unbelievable true story, an elusive figure and an ongoing thread to create a riveting and hilarious punk documentary.
