Tze (pronounced "Z") Chun is a filmmaker working out of New York City. He was born in Chicago and raised outside of Boston, and received his bachelor's degree in film studies at Columbia University. His debut feature CHILDREN OF INVENTION premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and has gone on to be one of the most-awarded and best-reviewed films of the year. It recently won Grand Jury Prizes for Best Narrative Feature at the Newport International Film Festival, Independent Film Festival of Boston, and Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, and Special Jury Prizes at the Sarasota, Nashville, Los Angeles Asian Pacific, and San Francisco International Asian American Film Festivals.
His short film WINDOWBREAKER was selected to play at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, as well as over thirty other high-profile international festivals. It won the audience award at the 2006 New York City Short Film Festival and best short film at the 2007 Vietnamese International Film Festival. That same year, Chun was selected to participate in Tribeca Film Festival’s All Access Program with his feature ARTIFICIAL DISSEMINATION and IFP’s No Borders International Co-Production Market with his feature YOU'RE A BIG GIRL NOW (also recently selected for the Sundance Producers Lab). In the summer of 2007, Chun was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film."
Along with his writing partner Mike Weiss, Chun recently served as a staff writer on Darren Star's ABC's Primetime Drama Cashmere Mafia, created by Kevin Wade and starring Lucy Liu. Chun and Weiss worked under showrunner Jeff Rake, and wrote episode seven, Dog Eat Dog, which aired in February 2008. The pair were hired for the show off their original pilot, Getting in Good, a tongue-in-cheek drama set in the uber-competitive world of Manhattan private school admissions.
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 also painted the original artwork for the poster of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's Academy-Award nominated Half Nelson (THINKFilm) as well as the children's book drawings used in the film.
