August 2008

Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho) has been described as "the preeminent Native American filmmaker of his time" by People magazine. In 2007 he was selected for two prestigious artist awards — the United States Artists Fellowship and the Bush Foundation Artists Fellowship in Film/Media. In 2007 he also received an All Roads Film Project Seed Grant for Lazarus Rises (working title). Eyre has been awarded many other artists honors and fellowships. He was one of three established filmmakers selected to participate in the inaugural Tribeca All Access program in 2004. He was a 1995 recipient of the Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship (now a fellowship program of the Tribeca Film Institute).

Eyre recently has been chosen to direct three of the five films in the groundbreaking Native American history series We Shall Remain, produced by PBS' American Experience and scheduled for broadcast in 2009. He has also been working with emerging filmmakers as an executive producer and producer, and recent works include Imprint (director: Michael Linn) and California Indian (director: Tim Ramos (Pomo)). Eyre's first feature, Smoke Signals, was one of the five highest-grossing independent films in 1998. It won the Audience Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, and Eyre was awarded the festival's Filmmaker's Trophy.

In 2004 Eyre was again honored at Sundance when Edge of America, based on a true story of a reservation high school girls basketball team's road to the state finals, was selected for the festival's Salt Lake City opening night. In 2006 Edge of America, produced by Showtime, received the Peabody Award, one of the most prestigious awards in electronic media. The film also received the 2005 Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement from the Directors Guild of America and the 2006 Parents' Choice Award. In 2005, for the opening of the new National Museum of the American Indian, Eyre produced the museum's signature film, A Thousand Roads, and has been invited to be a selector for NMAI's 2009 Native American Film + Video Festival. His other films include A Thief of Time and Skinwalkers, based on the novels of Tony Hillerman, for the PBS series Mystery!, documentaries and music videos. He currently resides in Rapid City, South Dakota, with his daughter, Shahela.

"With my work I like the shades: very rarely are our thoughts really black or white except in the case of our own bias and the limitations of our own experience. We tend to be so limited in our perceptions of what AMERICA is. We don't know about our own history, about being real with those that aren't of us. We need some more social/shared understanding and laughter. There is no one truth to our diversity."

Screened by NMAI

• We Shall Remain: Tecumseh (2008) director
• Imprint (2007) producer
• A Thousand Roads (2005) director
• A Thief of Time (Mystery!) (2003) director
• Edge of America (2003) director
• Skins (2002) director, co-producer, actor
• The Doe Boy (2001) producer
• Smoke Signals (1998) director, co-producer
• Bringing It All Back Home (1996) director
• Tenacity (1994) director

Image credit: Chris Eyre - courtesy of Gwendolen Cates and Native Peoples Magazine; Chris Eyre - courtesy of the filmmaker