	According to Bachtiar Effendi, an actor and later film director who had worked with Lie several times, Lie had worked at a film distributor's office before joining Tan's, handling the distribution and sometimes editing of Hollywood imports. The Indonesian film historian Misbach Yusa Biran credits this as giving Lie a wider worldview and more modern sensibilities while directing. In 1929 Lie directed his first film, "Njai Dasima", for Tan's Film. The two-part film, which followed a woman who was tricked into leaving her wealthy lover by a "delman" driver, was a critical success; it was Lie's first adaptation of a literary work, having been derived from the novel "Tjerita Njai Dasima" ("Story of Njai Dasima"), written by G. Francis in 1896.