"...definitely a director to watch out for."
- Jason St-Laurent, Director of Programming, Inside Out Festival, Toronto

"...a talent to watch. We can't wait to see what he does next."
- Todd Camp, Festival Director, Fort Worth International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, United States

Christopher Banks is an award-winning film-maker, journalist and songwriter based in New Zealand.

His first feature, the camp comedy Quiet Night In, was unleashed on the international festival circuit in 2005, with an Australasian DVD release in 2007. His second film, Teddy, was released in 2009 to critical and audience acclaim and played at some of the worlds largest gay film festivals, including Outfest Los Angeles, Frameline San Francisco, and Inside Out Toronto. It has won three awards, and became the first New Zealand film to be nominated for the prestigious Iris Prize for short filmmaking in the UK.  His third film, Communication, was released in 2010 and has won two international awards.

Banks was the senior writer for New Zealand's leading GLBT news and entertainment website GayNZ.com from 2003-06, and was an occasional contributor to London's Gay Times magazine. He writes fortnightly for New Zealand's national gay newspaper Express, and in 2004 he wrote, directed and presented stories for the award-winning TV2 show Queer Nation.

In the late 1990s, Banks wrote and produced a string of top 40 hits in New Zealand, including three consecutive number ones for a pop group which he founded, Deep Obsession. It was the first time a local group had ever achieved such a feat, and the subsequent album was certified platinum and went on to be released internationally. 

He has worked in public relations for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, and the Access To Medicines Coalition.  Since 2006 he has been the co-editor of Collective Thinking, a quarterly magazine for HIV-positive people, their carers and supporters.  His daily blog, Bipolar Bear, chronicles his personal experience of living with a mental illness.

For some years, he has also been an accomplished web and graphic designer, designing and maintaining websites for his acts signed to Universal Music and Warner Music New Zealand.  Recent projects include the highly successful design and launch of sites and social media web presences for his films Communication, The Colonel's Outing, and Number 8 Films, a charitable film-making trust which he co-founded with producer Andy Jalfon in 2009.

Banks now lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and is married to Dean, his partner of fifteen years and co-owner of Burning Rope Productions. He is very fond of Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, the boardgame Cluedo, and the classic British sitcom Are You Being Served?.

He is currently on the international festival circuit with his fourth film, The Colonel's Outing, which builds on the bittersweet mix of emotion which captured the hearts of audiences for Teddy and Communication, portraying a relationship between two men in the twilight of their lives in a way which few have cared to acknowledge or celebrate.