TZE CHUN | WRITER-DIRECTOR
Tze (pronounced "Z") Chun was born in Chicago and raised outside of Boston. He
received his bachelor's degree in film studies at Columbia University.
Chun’s debut feature CHILDREN OF INVENTION premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and went on to be one of the most-awarded and best-reviewed films of the year. It won 17 film festival awards, including 8 Grand Jury or Best Narrative Feature prizes. The film was released theatrically in March 2010 to rave reviews--Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said the film is "A fine feature debut...while the politics are there, you might be too busy choking back tears to notice"; Variety said it is "Urgent, artful...austerely poetic"; and USA Today's Claudia Puig said, "I loved this movie. I can't remember when I have loved a movie quite as much as this one."
The film was based on Chun’s short film WINDOWBREAKER, which was selected for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and for which Chun was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film." Chun’s follow-up feature, a crime thriller titled COLD COMES THE NIGHT, starring Alice Eve, Logan Marshall-Green, and Bryan Cranston, was acquired by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions and will be released in 2013. Chun was named the 2012 USA Rockefeller Fellow in Media.
In television, Chun wrote for Darren Star's ABC's 2007 primetime drama, CASHMERE MAFIA, created by Kevin Wade and starring Lucy Liu. He was hired for the show off his and writing partner Mike Weiss’ original pilot, GETTING IN GOOD, a tongue-in-cheek drama set in the uber-competitive world of Manhattan private school admissions. Chun recently sold a spec pilot to The CW that Dan Jinks is producing.
Chun also works as a painter and visual artist. He is represented at CVZContemporary gallery in Soho, and has commissioned portraits in private residences in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, and New Orleans. Chun painted the original artwork for the poster of Academy-Award nominated HALF NELSON as well as the children's book drawings used in the film.
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