Shirkers
2018, 97 minutes, Digital
USA
Language: English
Director: Sandi Tan
Distributor: Netflix
Screening hosted by director Sandi Tan
An inspired labor of love for zine-making teens Sandi Tan, Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique, Shirkers was a Singapore-made 1992 cult classic—or it would have been, had the 16mm footage not been stolen by their enigmatic American collaborator Georges Cardona, who disappeared. More than two decades later, Tan, now a novelist in L.A., returns to the country of her youth and to the memories of a man who both enabled and thwarted her dreams. Magically, too, she returns to the film itself, revived in a way she never could have imagined.
“A 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.”
— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
“It sends you wondering at all the wild creativity and genius of young irrepressible women lost to time, held up or buried by the domineering egos of men.”
— Emily Yoshida, New York Magazine / Vulture
“An exemplary work of counter-lives and alternative histories, intimate self-portraiture and cultural reconstruction, hard-won empathy and painful reconciliation.”
— Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Part of the series CONTEMPORARY WOMEN FILMMAKERS and MAKING CINEMA MATTER IN BALTIMORE.
Join director Sandi Tan for a FREE masterclass April 6, 10am-1pm, at the Parkway.
MAKING CINEMA MATTER IN BALTIMORE is a FREE artist-led workshop and screening series featuring distinguished visiting filmmakers who connect their films and filmmaking to social, creative, or cultural issues in Baltimore. This project is presented in partnership with Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Film Festival/Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway Theatre, and the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.