Christopher Jonathan James Nolan ( born 30 July 1970), is an English-American film director, screenwriter and producer.

He received serious notice after his second feature Memento (2000), which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him, including the Batman series and The Prestige. He also first collaborated with Wally Pfister, who would photograph all his subsequent films. After directing Insomnia (2002), Nolan pitched an idea for a reboot of the Batman film franchise to Warner Bros., eventually making a successful trilogy consisting of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).Inception (2010) was based on an original screenplay by Nolan, a heist film set in the world of "shared dreaming." Nolan co-founded Syncopy Films with his wife, Emma Thomas, and they have produced all his films since The Prestige (2006).Nolan has also worked with screenwriter David S. Goyer, film editor Lee Smith, composers David Julyan and Hans Zimmer, special effects coordinator Chris Corbould, and actors Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cillian Murphy, Jeremy Theobald, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.Nolan spent his childhood in the United States and England, and later studied English literature at University College London, which he chose specifically for its film-making facilities. There he made a series of short films in the college film society, and met the friends with whom he would later make Following (1998), his independent début feature.

Early life

Nolan was born in London, the son of an Englishman, who worked as an advertising copywriter, and an American mother, a flight attendant.He has a younger brother, Jonathan, with whom he often collaborates on film scripts. As a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, he spent his childhood in both London and Chicago.Nolan found an interest in botany and dicots early on, until he found his father's camera. He began film-making at the age of seven using his fathers Super 8 camera and his toy action figures. While living in Chicago as a child, he also made short films with Roko Belic, who would become a director and producer in his own right.Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College, an independent school on Hertford Heath in Hertfordshire, England, and later read English literature at University College London. Nolan chose UCL specifically for its film-making facilities, which consisted of a "Steenbeck editing suite (real film, real spools) plus a couple of 16mm cameras". Nolan was president of the college film society from 1992 to 1994; a contemporary described him as talented and focused on learning as much as possible about the mechanics and technology of film-making.Nolan graduated from UCL in 1993, but continued to associate with the film society, friends from there would later be involved in Following. Meanwhile he earned a living by producing corporate training videos. In 1997, Nolan married Emma Thomas, his college girlfriend and long-time film producer. They have four children.

Short films

Tarantella (1989) was shown on Image Union, an independent film and video showcase on the Public Broadcasting Service.Larceny (1996) was a short film by Nolan which contained traits later to be seen in his first feature, Following. Jeremy Theobald also appeared in Larceny, a short film shot by Nolan while in the UCLU Film Society. Theobald stated "Still, it was clear Chris was different. We met through friends because he’d heard that I was interested in making films. He gave me a script for Larceny, a short that he proposed to make in black-and-white with a restricted cast, crew and equipment in the space of a weekend. It was different from any other script I’d read at college. They were often art pieces that would explore the slamming of train doors on Euston station (in the days when trains had doors that you could slam). This script was sharp, irreverent and clever. Larceny worked well and I thought as a first foray into film acting, I did okay." Larceny was funded by Nolan himself, but shot using the Society's equipment. It is considered to be one of the best shorts produced by the Society in recent generations. Filmed in black and white on an Arri 16BL, it contains some superb hand-held camera work, and a fast-paced, gripping story.Doodlebug (1997) is a three minute film about a man chasing an insect with a shoe around a grotty flat, only to discover on killing it that it is a miniature of himself, seconds before he himself is crushed by a larger version of himself. Nolan wrote, directed, co-produced, photographed, and edited the film. Jeremy Theobald was listed as "the man" in the credits; he would later play the protagonist in Following (1998), Nolan's first feature.

Features

Main article: Following

Nolan directed his first feature film, Following, in 1998. The film depicts a writer who is obsessed with following random people. Scenes are shown out of chronological order. Nolan made the film on a budget of only £3,000. He shot it on weekends, over the course of a year, working with friends he had met at the University College London film society. To conserve expensive film stock, every scene in the film was rehearsed extensively to ensure that the first or second take could be used in the final edit. Nolan directed the film from his own script, and also photographed and edited it himself.It began to receive notice after a screening at the 1998 San Francisco Film Festival, and was eventually distributed on a limited basis by Zeitgeist in 1999.