Chris Eyre

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Chris Eyre (b. 1968 in Portland, Oregon), an enrolled Cheyenne/Arapaho, is an award-winning film director and producer. His films focus on all aspects of contemporary Native American life, while dispelling the usual stereotypes. Eyre's debut film, Smoke Signals (1998), won the coveted Sundance Film Festival Filmmakers Trophy and the Audience Award. ^[1]

Eyre's strengths as a filmmaker shows in his subsequent work. Skins is a gritty, yet beautiful tale of two brothers on the Pine Ridge Reservation—one is a tribal cop and the other is a Vietnam vet battling alcohol and emotional problems. Eyre has also directed two episodes of the famed PBS series Mystery!; Thief of Time and Skinwalkers starring Adam Beach as Jim Chee, and Wes Studi as Joe Leaphorn. Both were executive produced by Robert Redford and based on the best selling Tony Hillerman novels. Skinwalkers revolves around the mystery of skinwalkers or shape-shifters, and the murders of several medicine men. A Thief of Time is a who-dunnit that intertwines very competitive anthropologists, possible artifact thievery, a missing professor, and the legend of the Anasazi.

Eyre's Edge of America had the distinction of being the 2004 Sundance Film Festival "opening night" film. Edge of America is loosely based on the true story of a black English teacher who goes to the Three Nations Reservation to teach, but ends up coaching the very underachieving girls basketball team and takes them all the way to the state finals. In the process, he learns as much about their culture and race relations in America as much as they learn about winning and self-esteem. On January 29, 2006, Eyre won the DGA's award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children's Programs for Edge of America, becoming the first Native American to win the award.

Eyre's short film, A Thousand Roads, the "signature film" for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, opened in Washington D.C. April 10, 2005, for an unlimited and exclusive engagement. It is a contemporary film, following four American Indians in different locations, as they each confront everyday events.

Chris Eyre was named a 2007 USA Rockefeller Foundation Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists.