Kirsten Tan

Kirsten Tan is a Singaporean film director and screenwriter. She is best known for her 2017 feature film debut, Pop Aye, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival,[1] and was Singapore's official submission to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[2]

Kirsten Tan
Born
Singapore
Alma materNew York University
Occupation
Notable work
Pop Aye

Early life and education

Tan was born in Singapore to Chinese-educated business parents who wanted her to study science or economics.[3] A bilingual and voracious reader, as a child Tan read Charles Dickens alongside Jin Yong wuxia sword-fighting novels. Of this period she has said: “Reading was my first escape, an immediate access to a larger world.”[3]

As a teenager at Dunman High and Victoria Junior College, Tan wrote short stories and poems, sometimes on toilet paper squares she would flush away.[3] Tan says she was classified as “the oddball, the slacker".[4]

After obtaining her Bachelor's degree in English Literature at the National University of Singapore, Tan studied film production at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where she would sneak into the restricted section of the film library to “steal” works by Agnès Varda and Wim Wenders.[3]

Korea and Thailand

Tan lived in Jeonju, South Korea, for a year as part of the Asian Young Filmmakers Forum.[3] After this, she lived for the next two years in Chiang Mai and Bangkok in Thailand. During this time, she made a string of short films, formed a rock band called Century Ache,[3] and had a shop at the Chatuchak Weekend Market where she sold T-shirts.[5]

A Thai fortune-teller once said to Tan: “The gods are confused about where you sleep.”[6]

New York

Tan moved to New York City in 2005, where she obtained her MFA in Directing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[7]

Tan said that she always felt like a rolling stone in the cities that she moved to and that she never really fit in in those places.[8]

Career

Short Films

Tan first came into prominence through her short films: 10 Minutes Later (2005), Fonzi (2007), Sink (2009), Cold Noodles (2010) and Dahdi (2014).[9] Her films are marked by a fascination with time and a bleak humor towards existence.[10]

Pop Aye

Pop Aye was Tan's debut feature. It centers on a disenchanted architect who unexpectedly reunites with his long-lost elephant on the streets of Bangkok. The unlikely pair embark on a road trip across the country towards the rural farm where they grew up together.[11]

Tan has said that the film is "essentially about two wayfaring misfits — in this case, a man past his prime and his displaced street elephant — searching for meaning and belonging in space and time.”[12]

Pop Aye premiered in competition at Sundance as the opening film of the World Dramatic selection, and was awarded a Special Jury Prize for Screenwriting. It went on to pick up the Golden Eye at the Zurich Film Festival for Best International Feature Film[13] and the VPRO Big Screen Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.[14] Pop Aye was the first Singaporean film to win a major award at Sundance[15] and also at Rotterdam Film Festival.[16]

Pop Aye was Singapore's official submission to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[17]

It was acquired by Kino Lorber,[18] and screened to positive reviews in The Hollywood Reporter, Variety (magazine), Roger Ebert,[19] and Screen International.[20]

"Loneliness, alienation, the ache of nostalgia and the everyday absurdity of life infuse every encounter in the unconventional road trip. Like the journey it depicts, the first feature by New York-based, Singapore-raised writer-director Kirsten Tan is unhurried and unforgettable."[21] The Hollywood Reporter

"Warm yet unsentimental, graced with the lightest touch of surrealism... (Tan) has also distilled her bohemian travels around the country into a fictional journey that's both authentically off-the-beaten track and something more metaphorical, with the elephant Pop Aye gradually assuming a significance on the level of Rosebud in “Citizen Kane.”[22] Variety

Personal life

Tan lives in Brooklyn, New York and is blind in one eye.[23]

Tan is a co-founder of the Asian Film Archive.[24] She has also curated an Ingmar Bergman retrospective for the 2017 Swedish Film Festival in Singapore on the occasion of Bergman's centennial.[25]

Tan has cited Roy Andersson and Kurt Vonnegut as influences.[26]

gollark: Yes. I did it a while ago. It was extremely.
gollark: I mean that it probably picks an algorithm depending on list length.
gollark: On such short lists I'd imagine it's just insertion sort.
gollark: ```python def check_ticket(self, ticket): # compare ticket and winner order-insensitively return sorted(self.winner) == sorted(ticket)```
gollark: ```python def generate_winner(self): self.winner = self.generate_ticket() return self.winner```

References
  1. Olsen, Steven Zeitchik, Mark. "Films about, and by, women take top honors at politics-heavy Sundance awards". latimes.com.
  2. Frater, Patrick (2017-09-25). "Singapore Picks 'Pop Aye' for Foreign-Language Oscar Contention". Variety.
  3. Wong, Kim Hoh (2017-02-26). "It Changed My Life: Film-maker Kirsten Tan's journey from quirky distraction to movie magic". The Straits Times.
  4. "The One #girlpower Speech we wished we'd heard when we were growing up". Her World.
  5. Rithdee, Kong (2017-06-29). "On the road, with the elephant". Bangkok Post.
  6. "Kirsten Tan: Road To Success". Prestige Online - Society’s Luxury Authority.
  7. "Five NYU Alumni Are Big Winners at Sundance 2017". New York University. 2017-02-02.
  8. "POP AYE, Singapore's Oscar Entry, an interview with director - Cinema Without Borders". Cinema Without Borders. 2017-11-28.
  9. "Kirsten Tan". IMDb. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  10. "Sundance 2017 Women Directors: Meet Kirsten Tan — "Pop Aye"". womenandhollywood.com. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  11. "Film Forum · POP AYE". filmforum.org.
  12. "Singapore Selects Kirsten Tan's "Pop Aye" for Foreign-Language Oscar Pick". womenandhollywood.com.
  13. "'Pop Aye' wins best international film at 2017 Zurich Film Festival". Screen.
  14. "Pop Aye - vpro cinema". VPRO (in Dutch).
  15. "Kirsten Tan's Pop Aye wins screenwriting award at Sundance". TODAYonline.
  16. "Another international award for Singapore film Pop Aye". The Straits Times. Retrieved 2017-02-05.
  17. "Singapore picks Pop Aye for foreign-language Oscar contention". Channel NewsAsia.
  18. Winfrey, Graham (2017-01-24). "Kino Lorber Acquires 'Pop Aye' — Sundance 2017". IndieWire. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  19. Murthi, Vikram. "Pop Aye Movie Review & Film Summary (2017) | Roger Ebert". www.rogerebert.com.
  20. "'Pop Aye': Review". Screen. Retrieved 2018-11-25.
  21. "'Pop Aye': Film Review | Sundance 2017". The Hollywood Reporter.
  22. Lee, Maggie (2017-01-20). "Film Review: 'Pop Aye'". Variety.
  23. "How to turn an elephant into a movie star: Filmmaker Kirsten Tan". Channel NewsAsia.
  24. "Asian Film Archive 10" (PDF). www.asianfilmarchive.org. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
  25. "Kirsten Tan on the Swedish Film Festival: "If a film god exists, I believe it would be Ingmar Bergman"".
  26. "A poignant homecoming: Kirsten Tan on directing Dahdi | Singapore International Film Festival". Singapore International Film Festival.
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