Meet the winner of SFFILM’s 2020 New American Fellowship

SFFILM has announced the winner of its New American Fellowship, a program that kicked off last year to support international artists who have made the United States their home and want to tell their stories through film. The first of its kind in the US film industry, the New American Fellowship is made possible thanks to SFFILM’s collaboration with the Flora Family Foundation, and provides a $25,000 cash grant and a FilmHouse artist residency in San Francisco to an independent director or producer who has recently moved to the United States. Designed to amplify the voices of international filmmakers and to champion their work in the US, the New American Fellowship seeks to support films by new American artists, ultimately providing meaningful and challenging experiences to public audiences.

The 2020 New American Fellow is Singaporean filmmaker Kirsten Tan, who is currently in the development and screenwriting stage on her narrative feature project Higher, about a mysterious flood that rises through a metropolitan apartment building while its residents fight for survival and resources, setting off an absurdist satire of five interlocking stories that grapple with morality, truth, and justice.

Kirsten Tan is a New York-based Singaporean filmmaker whose debut feature Pop Aye premiered as the Opening Night film of the World Cinema Dramatic competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The film went on to receive a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, the VPRO Big Screen Award at Rotterdam, the Best International Film Award at Zurich, and the Audience Award at Innsbruck. To date, it has screened at over 50 film festivals and was invited to represent Singapore in the Foreign-film Category at the Oscars. Before Pop Aye, her short films 10 Minutes Later, Fonzi, Sink, Cold Noodles, and Dahdi have collectively received over ten international awards. Ella, a fashion film she directed for Giorgio Armani, was included in the permanent film collection of MoMA in NYC. A Sundance Institute and Cinereach Film Fellow, Tan earned her MFA at NYU Graduate Film School, where she received the Tisch School of the Arts Fellowship.
 
“My next feature project, Higher, is in its early stages of development and receiving SFFILM’s New American Fellowship at this juncture is a huge confidence booster,” said Tan. “Reading Jack Kerouac’s novels growing up, San Francisco has always carried an attractive air of progressive freedom to me so I thoroughly look forward to exploring and learning more about the city. I often write better in new environments as the unfamiliarity creates an imaginary tension that feeds the writing. I know the residency will certainly provide a respite for me as I work towards a shooting version of Higher’s screenplay.”

Previous recipients of the New American Fellowship include Chinese filmmaker Siyi Chen, who won in 2019 in support of her documentary projects My Grandma’s a Dancer and People’s Hospital.

For more information, visit sffilm.org/makers.