Come Monday, the Denver Film Society will formally announce the appointment of Tom Botelho as executive director of the recently beleaguered organization. A former advertising executive, as well as a longtime marketing honcho at the Denver Newspaper Agency, Botelho is a popular figure in Denver — and he arrives with skills that should burnish the film society’s image, somewhat battered after a series of personnel shake-ups over the past few months.
He also comes with some big goals for expanding the society’s reach into the community. The film society runs the Starz Denver Film Festival, as well as its own artplex, the Starz Denver FilmCenter on the Auraria campus.
He’s already talking about three groups he intends to go after with vigor — students, women and Latinos — with varied and aggressive outreach and programs.
To get more specific, he’s already met with David Dynak, dean of the College of Arts and Media at the University of Colorado Denver. The film society will expand producer Barbara Bridge’s Women + Film program, which got its start in the festival.
The 32nd Starz Denver Film Festival (Nov. 12-22) will focus on one of the most exciting developments in world cinema: the powerhouse emergence of Mexican film.
Botelho says he’s aware of the big job he has taken on.
“The challenges?” he says rhetorically, sitting in a quiet spot in the student lounge next door to the FilmCenter. “I always look at our strengths and our assets. We’re a 32-year-old organization. You look at our donor list, our patrons are amazing. The people who always supported us are going to be there.”
Among the tasks ahead: the need to balance a precarious budget and smooth things over at an organization so recently traumatized.
In June, the board removed Bo Smith as executive director after a great deal of staff upheaval. A veteran programmer at the film-video program at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, he had been hired only eight months before.
Long-time film-society honcho Britta Erickson was named interim executive director. Colleague Brit Withey returned as artistic director after having resigned.
In naming Botelho, the 32-year-old cultural institution has hired a leader with more than a decade-long relationship with the organization and the city’s movers and shakers.
At the urging of local filmmaker Jim Phelan, Botelho joined the film society board in the early ’90s. He served on and off for 12 years, including a stint as board chair. Last year, while the film society conducted its search for a new leader, it was Botelho who stepped in as interim executive director.
“I’d be crazy if I said all of that’s behind us,” he says of the upheaval that finds him back in the position permanently.
“An organization really comes to a standstill when something happens like that. Britta stepped in and really did a great job,” says Botelho.
It was a great deal of turmoil. Yet Botelho is taking the meetings and fostering the ideas of his staff that honor the organization’s legacy even as he broadens its reach.
He’s also taking care of business.
In late spring, the film society was looking at a $150,000 deficit.
“Our money comes in big lumps at certain times of the year, and we had a bit of a cash-flow issue,” he says. “My first job was to get the budget right. Second week of July, we presented a budget that was in the black.”
For-profit mind, nonprofit world
To close the gap, three positions were cut. And the FilmCenter remains shuttered Mondays and Tuesdays. “I’m not happy about that,” Botelho admits.
And, “You can’t just shrink stuff. We have to raise more money. That’s where my strengths are best suited, when you can find the sweet spot where people see the mutual benefit of the relationship. It’s a for-profit mentality in a nonprofit world.”
Botelho recalls the year that the festival opened with Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts,” in which a full-frontal nudity shot confirmed that Julianne Moore was indeed a natural redhead. He had been effective in lining up a number of sponsors for that year’s event.
“All these bank executives looked at me: ‘Tom what did you get us into?’ But that’s what we do. We challenge. They saw my enthusiasm, and I’m sure it was shared,” he says with an easy laugh.
That was in the early ’90s. “That’s how far I go back,” he says. “I think it’s in the stars.”
Botelho’s fondness for film’s populist tug should complement festival programmers Erickson and Withey, as well as FilmCenter program manager Keith Garcia.
“I don’t need to be a programmer. I have a crack programming team. In my mind, our programming has always been rock-solid,” he says.
“Mile-High Sci-Fi is a great program for us,” he says, referring to the popular snark fest (similar in format to TV’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000”) that has returned to the FilmCenter. During Smith’s tenure, it relocated.
He also mentions the launch in August of The Watching Hour, Garcia’s dark genre series that got its start within the festival. “It’s just fun.”
When Botelho and wife Michelle arrived from Chicago in 1984, they came with a bit of attitude about the cow town, he admits. Then, they attended the Denver International Film Festival.
“It was so special,” he says. “I think that’s why people love our festival. Where people who might not come to us as the Starz FilmCenter, because that’s a smaller niche of people, they love the in- persons with directors, the excitement of being challenged. I think that feeling’s what keeps drawing me back to this role.
“My challenge will be to make sure that feeling goes on all year.”
