Christopher Munch
Christopher Munch is an American writer-director-producer. Self-taught in filmmaking and a native of Southern California, he began making films as a youngster. All of his feature films have played at Sundance (four of them in competition), and his first feature, The Hours and Times (1991), a speculative historical biography about Beatles' manager Brian Epstein, won a special jury prize there. A micro-budget "kitchen-table" production made with a talented cast but just one crew member, The Hours and Times went on to wide critical acclaim and preceded by most of a decade the trend toward handmade personal filmmaking that accompanied the digital video revolution (although, with just one exception, Munch has never strayed from shooting film). An impossible dream was the overarching theme of Munch's second feature, the black and white period drama Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996), based on the true story of a young trolley mechanic who tries to save a doomed short-line railroad to Yosemite National Park. More than a decade later, Munch returned to wilderness filmmaking with the acclaimed drama Letters from the Big Man (2011), which was a New York Times Critics' Pick and featured a lauded central performance by Lily Rabe. His other notable features have included The Sleepy Time Gal (2001). Munch has occasionally worked as an editor for other directors he admires. He is a past Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the Wolfgang Staudte Prize at Berlin, winner of the "Someone To Watch" Independent Spirit Award, and has been featured in two Whitney Biennial exhibitions.