After a six-month search, the Denver Film Society has named Burleigh “Bo” Smith its new executive director.
Smith is a 21-year veteran of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where his title was Head of Film/Video and Concerts. Before that, he oversaw film, video and performance exhibitions in Minnesota for St. Paul’s Film in the Cities program.
His official start date is Oct. 14.
The hire reflects the film society’s mission to broaden its outreach to Denver’s various communities while elevating its national profile.
Smith will head one of the city’s premier cultural institutions, which is responsible for the annual Starz Denver Film Festival and Starz FilmCenter, a multi-screen movie theater on the Auraria campus.
“What’s exciting about Bo is he’s the perfect combination of the entrepreneurial and the educational,” said Nina Henderson Moore, chair of the DFS board (and wife of The Denver Post editor Greg Moore). “He’s been able to latch onto community partnerships and groups and be inclusive of them, as well as for them. He has the entrepreneurial, leadership and management skills to really make our vision come alive,” she said.
Smith’s desire to program beyond the usual fare began when he was a student at the University of Kansas in the 1970s.
“I wanted to show films that represented populations not seen much on the screen. But also I wanted to collaborate with all these different constituencies, to show something that might really trigger serious discussion and stick with people in a way that their lives might be altered,” Smith said.
His years in St. Paul and Boston honed those ambitions.
At the MFA, he worked with community groups putting together series that showcased various cinemas including French, Jewish, Iranian, Turkish, African and gay/lesbian. Smith also helped design plans for a new film- and live-events theater for the museum, which is scheduled to open in 2010.
One of Smith’s accomplishments was growing a summer French film festival, which now has 10,000 attendees.
“Bo really carved out a place for film at a very prestigious organization at a major U.S. city,” said Ron Henderson, retired artistic director of DFS.
“He even raised money to endow his position into perpetuity.” Meaning that now Smith is headed to Denver, the MFA’s commitment to film is assured.
Smith’s hire from a renowned art museum comes as an affirmation of cinema’s artistic importance in Denver.
“Bo Smith has altered the cinema landscape in Boston while ensuring that, in a film-exhibition universe stacked against alternative fare, the best movies from around the world and in our own backyard have had a place to unspool,” wrote The Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr on his blog Friday.
