Birth name
Tabitha, San San, Yap
Mini biography
She was only 9 as a child actress on a Malaysian
Christmas kids show when Tabitha Yap first experienced the world of film and television. Though terribly sick on the day of
her shoot, the energies and technicalities mesmerised her: She finally realised that tv shows were made; that little entertainers
didn't live in small black boxes. Somewhere between learning her lines and being lost within the labyrinth
of sets, a bug was planted: The bug of visual storytelling.
It was not until she landed in New Zealand in
2000 that her dreams were enlightened. After two weeks of pursuing a BSc. in Microbiology, Tabitha realised that she
did not want to be caged forever in white labs researching on the latest bacteria strains.
She was finally courageous enough to pursue
the arts, something that was, up till then, her hobby: Namely writing, literature and the visual media. It was through her
B.A. in English and Media Studies that she had made her first student film about a psychopathic stalker, as well as a
music video. Her journey then took her to South Seas Film and Television School in 2004 where she majored in Drama Directing under the guidance of filmmaker David Blyth.
Since then, she has written/directed a couple of tiny
projects and her first major short film, which has been recommended for entry into film festivals. "Catatonic Dreams" (2004) has been described as "David Lynch meets Alice in Wonderland".
Indeed, Tabitha has been a Lynchian devotee since
watching the "Twin Peaks" series at the age of 12. She is also enthusiastic about German Expressionism, Quentin
Tarantino, Sofia Coppola and Darren Aronofsky, to name a few.
A risk-taker, her dramatic themes and motifs are
often dark and surrealistic. She also has a big heart for horror/cheese genres having created shorts about a zombie needing
plastic surgery, a vampire's first bite and a ghostly priest who haunts a sinful nun.
Her narrative is often nonlinear as well: the boundaries
between reality/dreams and past/present/future are always blurred. However, Tabitha is eager in testing herself with
a more conventional narrative, a tale that is intense yet heartwarming.
Although she is practically still a virgin in the
filmmaking world, with further experience, Tabitha "has the potential to do well and her cinematic flair is already evident".
- February 2005 -
*citations from South Seas Film and Television School reports and David Blyth*
