Kim Smith
Independent Filmmaker
Other Roles: Director
Areas of Focus: Documentaries, Shorts
Biography
Kim Smith is a documentary filmmaker, wildlife conservationist, lecturer, photojournalist, author, illustrator, and an award-winning landscape designer specializing in creating butterfly and songbird habitats.
Kim has devoted her life work to producing independent documentaries that celebrate the natural world of New England and its deep cultural vibrancy. She writes, directs, edits, and is the cinematographer. Her hope with each nature film is to inspire her audience to take action to protect wildlife and with Saint Peter’s Fiesta, to dive deeply into the close ties between immigrant and maritime culture.
Kim is currently fundraising and in production for Saint Peter’s Fiesta and the third film in her Threatened Species Series, On Summersweet Pond.
Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly encourages people to see their local ecosystems as special places worth conserving and their backyards in a new and beautiful light where they can create safe harbor for wildlife. The story of this charismatic butterfly and its magnificent migration is living proof of the ecological and spiritual link that connect Mexico, Canada, and nearly every geographic region in the United States.
The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay features the extraordinary life story, and also extreme fragility, of a tiny bird that nests on popular urban beaches. Kim also developed and manages a Piping Plover Ambassador Program that helps to educate individuals and communities about the bird’s struggle for survival and how they can become stewards of this highly vulnerable species in our midst.
The mission of Kim Smith Films is to create educational documentaries that celebrate and preserve our cultural and natural heritage. Our films are created for young and old and developed for national and international audiences, as demonstrated by the success of our two previous films.
In 2026, Kim was honored to receive the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals for her artistic vision and educational impact in documenting cultural activities and the natural world of Massachusetts. Kim is deeply honored to have been recognized with many awards and her conservation documentaries are playing worldwide at international film festivals and PBS. Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly and The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay are airing nationally on PBS through 2028. Working with American Public Television, it has been essential to her vision that her films air on PBS and she is grateful for this opportunity. PBS provides highly educational programming to families and is of particular value to underserved communities that might not otherwise have the opportunity to be inspired to protect and conserve wildlife and their habitats found in our own backyards and communities.
Both films are presented at conservation organizations, libraries, and schools throughout the US and Canada to help in goals of creating an awareness around protecting endangered and threatened species.
One of the greatest hopes for Beauty on the Wing and The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay is that adults and young people find the films educational and inspirational. We are overjoyed both documentaries are finding an audience with young and old alike.
Kim was recently interviewed by the BBC and PBS for her work in documenting the Monarch Butterfly. She worked with the show’s producers in writing and creating the story, providing footage from Beauty on the Wing: Life Story of the Monarch Butterfly for the BBC produced show “Autumnwatch New England.”
In May of 2019, Kim was featured in Audubon Magazine for her work protecting and documenting Piping Plovers, “How Plover Chicks Born in a Parking Lot Spurred a City to Make Its Beach Safer.” Kim leads a group in safeguarding local populations of Piping Plovers.
In April 2018, Kim was honored to receive the Salem State University “Friend of the Earth Award” and to give the keynote address for the University’s Earth Day Weeks events program. In 2017 she was named an Essex National Heritage Trailblazer and became an Essex Heritage Commissioner in recognition of her work connecting people to place.
In conjunction with Cambridge Seven Associates architectural firm, Kim designed the award- winning Gloucester HarborWalk Butterfly gardens. She specializes in creating pollinator habitat gardens utilizing primarily North American native wildflowers, trees, shrubs, and vines. https://kimsmithdesigns.com/design-projects/.
Her book on landscape design, Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities!, which she both wrote and illustrated, was published by David R. Godine, Boston. https://kimsmithdesigns.com/oh- garden/
For more information on Kim’s films and design projects follow her on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo, and visit her website at kimsmithdesigns.com
