Chris Menges

Menges was born in Kington, Herefordshire in 1940, the son of the composer and conductor Herbert Menges.^[1][2] His paternal grandfather, George, was a German emigrant to the United Kingdom.^[1] He was introduced to filmmaking as a teenager by his neighbour, documentarian Alan Forbes, and worked as his assistant for several years.^[1][3]

Menges cites Roberto Rossellini, Italian neorealism, Free Cinema, and the Czechoslovak New Wave as influences.^[3]

Menges began his career in the 1960s as camera operator for documentaries by Adrian Cowell. From 1961 to 1962, he worked for CBC Television's documentary division under Allan King.^[1] In 1963, he joined ITV Granada's news programme World in Action, where he was a cameraman for conflict reporting, including the Vietnam War, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Angolan War of Independence, the Algerian War, and the Zanzibar Revolution.^[3]

Back in Britain, Menges was a camera operator for feature films including Poor Cow by Ken Loach and If.... by Lindsay Anderson. Kes, directed by Loach, was his first film as cinematographer. Menges was also behind the camera on Stephen Frears' first feature film Gumshoe in 1971.

After several documentaries and feature films, such as Black Beauty (1971), Bloody Kids (1978), The Game Keeper (1980), Babylon (1980) and Angel (1982), Menges became notable for more ambitious works, for which he was critically acclaimed.

Menges also worked in the Star Wars entry The Empire Strikes Back, in 2nd unit photography^[3]

In 1983, Menges received his first BAFTA nomination for the Bill Forsyth film Local Hero, and only a year later won his first Academy Award for the film The Killing Fields about the genocide in Cambodia. He continued his work with helmer Roland Joffe, and Menges won his second Oscar in 1986 with the historical drama The Mission. He also shot a television play titled Made in Britain, starring Tim Roth, in 1983.

In 1988, Menges made his directorial debut with A World Apart, a biopic based on the life of South African anti-apartheid activist Ruth First and Joe Slovo. This film was celebrated at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and won three major awards.^[4]

His second film as director, CrissCross with Goldie Hawn, received critical acclaim, but was a box-office flop. In 1996 he moved back behind the camera to shoot the award-winning films The Boxer (directed by Jim Sheridan) and Michael Collins. For the latter, he received his third Academy Award nomination in 1997.

Menges also made documentaries. In the early 1970s, he went to Burma with British film maker Adrian Cowell to shoot The Opium Warlords, a film about the drug trade. After the release of the documentary in 1974, the Burmese government was said to have put a price on their heads. Menges is mentioned in the book Conversations with Cinematographers by David A. Ellis, published by Scarecrow Press.

Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd credits Menges as an influence.^[1]

Cinematographer

Short film

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1963	The War Game	Mai Zetterling	With Brian Probyn
1968	Solo	Misha Donat
1981	Couples and Robbers	Clare Peploe

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Feature film

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1968	Last of the Long-haired Boys	Peter Everett	Uncredited
1969	Kes	Ken Loach
1970	Loving Memory	Tony Scott	With Scott and John Metcalfe
1971	Black Beauty	James Hill
	Gumshoe	Stephen Frears
1979	Black Jack	Ken Loach
1980	Babylon	Franco Rosso
	The Gamekeeper	Ken Loach	With Charles Stewart
1981	A Sense of Freedom	John Mackenzie
	Looks and Smiles	Ken Loach
1982	Battletruck	Harley Cokeliss
	Angel	Neil Jordan
1983	Local Hero	Bill Forsyth
1984	Comfort and Joy
	The Killing Fields	Roland Joffé
	Winter Flight	Roy Battersby
1985	Marie	Roger Donaldson
1986	The Mission	Roland Joffé
	Fatherland	Ken Loach
1987	Shy People	Andrei Konchalovsky
	High Season	Clare Peploe
1996	Michael Collins	Neil Jordan
1997	The Boxer	Jim Sheridan
2001	The Pledge	Sean Penn
2002	Dirty Pretty Things	Stephen Frears
	The Good Thief	Neil Jordan
2004	Criminal	Gregory Jacobs
2005	Tickets	Ken Loach
	The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada	Tommy Lee Jones
	North Country	Niki Caro
2006	Notes on a Scandal	Richard Eyre
2008	The Yellow Handkerchief	Udayan Prasad
	Stop-Loss	Kimberly Peirce
	The Reader	Stephen Daldry	With Roger Deakins
2010	Route Irish	Ken Loach
	London Boulevard	William Monahan
2011	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close	Stephen Daldry
2013	Hummingbird	Steven Knight
2019	Waiting for the Barbarians	Ciro Guerra

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Documentary works

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Director	Notes
1966	Raid into Tibet	Adrian Cowell	Documentary short
1968	Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite	Kevin Brownlow
1969	Wild and Free Twice Daily	Himself
1969	Assignment Vietnam	Richard Taylor	Documentary short
1971	Talk About Work	Ken Loach
	The Save the Children Fund Film
1981	East 103rd Street	Himself
1984	Which Side Are You On?	Ken Loach	With Jimmy Dibling
1987	Warlords of the Golden Triangle	Adrian Cowell Wai-Chuen Yung
2003	Concert for George	David Leland
2019	Voice of Land	Henrique Bouduard

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Director

Documentary film

• Wild and Free Twice Daily (1969)
• East 103rd Street (1981) (Also producer)

Feature film

• A World Apart (1988)
• CrissCross (1992)
• Second Best (1993)
• The Lost Son (1999)