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Talkhouse

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Film

The 2021 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors’ Top Films of the Year

Sandi Tan’s documentary <a href="http://shirkersfilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shirkers</a> made its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where she won a Directing award, and the film was acquired by Netflix Originals. Born in Singapore, Sandi published a cult zine called The Exploding Cat at 16 and at 22 became the film critic at The Straits Times, Singapore’s largest newspaper. Then she threw all that away to run off to film school at Columbia University. Her short films Moveable Feast and Gourmet Baby have played at over 100 film festivals including the New York Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand and at venues like MoMA, as well as broadcast internationally on RAI, SBS and ZDF/arte. She is also the author of The Black Isle (Hachette USA), an epic novel that re-imagines Singapore’s 20th century as a ghost story. She lives in Pasadena, California. (Photo courtesy of Netflix.)

Sandi Tan

The Way We Get By: Sandi Tan on Comfort Movies, Socialist Realism and Bruce Conner

Cameron Yates is a filmmaker and curator. His latest feature, the documentary <a href="https://www.kinolorber.com/film/chef-flynn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chef Flynn</a>, a portrait of culinary prodigy Flynn McGarry, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and is currently in select theaters through Kino Lorber. His first film, 14 and Payrolled, a half-hour portrait of four teenagers working as pages for the Virginia House of Delegates, premiered on PBS in 2003. His first feature documentary, The Canal Street Madam, the story of a New Orleans madam who ran a brothel with her mother and daughter until she was busted by the FBI, world premiered at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival. A former World Cinema and Documentary Programmer for the Hamptons International Film Festival, Yates has also worked with Albert Maysles, Zeitgeist Films, Sundance, NewFest LGBT Film Fest, and has been a contributor to IndieWire.

Cameron Yates

My Year as a Shirkers Groupie