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In an eye-catching “get” for the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, noted American Indian filmmaker Chris Eyre has been appointed chairman of the school’s film department.
Eyre, who will take the job as of Feb. 1, directed 1998′s “Smoke Signals,” which won a Sundance Audience Award and the Sundance Filmmakers Trophy. His television and film work has won numerous awards, including a Peabody and an Emmy.
“My goal as department chair is to transform the Moving Image Arts Department into a world-class film school where students understand the power of telling a story in film and making the world a better place through it,” Eyre said in a statement provided by the school.
He said he would remain active in the film industry and that Santa Fe was one reason he took the faculty position.
“Santa Fe is a flagship destination for artists,” he said. He also cited the university’s current faculty and its facilities, including the Garson Studios and The Screen, the school’s respected art-house cinema.
Eyre’s latest film, “Hideaway,” starring Josh Lucas and James Cromwell, is due for release in May.
Eyre got his start under Robert Redford and his Sundance Institute Directors Lab.
Redford said in the university’s announcement that Eyre’s “influence on a new generation of storytellers will be significant.”
“His vision and imprimatur on this program will be profoundly valuable in ways that Chris, alone, is uniquely positioned to fill,” Redford said.
Eyre has been to Santa Fe in recent years for showings of his films, including a 2009 Indian Market presentation of one of three episodes he directed for PBS’s “We Shall Remain” documentary series about Native American history.
He told the Journal then that he has dedicated his professional life to portraying Native people as fully realized characters, including those from the past. “They were people who weren’t running around in loincloths and feathers, running around from tree to a rock with a gun and war-whooping,” he said.
Eyre’s films also include “A Thief of Time” and “Skinwalkers,” PBS movies based on New Mexico mystery writer Tony Hillerman’s novels set on the Navajo reservation.
He is a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma and currently lives in South Dakota.
“We are delighted to have one of the most charismatic and successful storytellers of our time directing our film program,” said university president Larry Hinz.
The university, run by for-profit Laureate Education Inc., came about after city government bought the campus of the historic College of Santa Fe when that school collapsed financially in 2009. The city rents the grounds and facilities to Baltimore-based Laureate, which operates college-level schools around the world. Laureate changed the name of the school in 2010.
