36-year-old Kirsten Tan’s debut feature Pop Aye was recently picked as Singapore’s submission to the 90th Academy Awards in the Foreign Language Film category. The road movie, about a disillusioned Thai architect and his elephant friend, won prizes at the Sundance and Rotterdam film festivals, both firsts for a Singaporean.
Tan was speaking to The Straits Times over the phone from Japan, where she was attending the Tokyo International Film Festival.
With multiple award-winning short films and documentaries under her belt, she also makes a living doing commercial work for the likes of Giorgio Armani and Heineken. Minutes before the interview, she was editing a commissioned short film for a Singapore luxury hotel.
She studied English literature at the National University of Singapore before joining Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Film and Media Studies. Tan, who also has a master’s in film production from New York University (NYU), considers herself “super fortunate” in an industry where funding is hard to come by.
Tan, who is exploring stories set in Singapore or New York for a new feature film, still remembers the difficulties she faced in her early days as a film-maker. “For the longest time, I was putting in my own money. The scary thing was not knowing whether my years of effort would amount to anything.
“You definitely need to be a bit nuts. You have to love your craft.”
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Source: The Straits Times, 6 November 2017