·       Collective Eye is creating a Grassroots Grant Program to provide films to organizations for educational institutions and grassroots organizations.  This will help the filmmakers connect with people interesting in furthering their message, get paid for their work, and give engaged individuals and organizations a valuable tool for outreach, fundraising, etc.

·       Katrina Taylor stepped up the plate to head up Distribution as Cole Stamm moved on to his first loves of animation and writing.  Through Katrina’s efforts, Collective Eye has brought on many new films and connected with filmmakers worldwide.

·       Collective Eye Distribution began creating and collecting educational study guides to accompany films

·       Taggart will began Collective Eye’s “screening nights” to showcase films and promote discussion …. at  its centrally located Southeast Portland studios sometime this fall.

·       Queen of the Sun Documentary Film was in full production during 2008 and continues to post production in 2009.  Jon Betz was hired as Producer helped get the project going forward beautifully.

Taggart Siegel’s Queen of The Sun, an HD feature-length documentary, celebrates the renewal and reverence of honeybees.  The film is a creative exploration of the escalating global bee crisis. For 10,000 years bees have been a barometer of the health of the world, flying millions of miles to pollinate the earth, providing humans with honey, medicine and fuel. Now, however, they’re in a state of emergency.

The film follows heroes dedicated to the survival of bees, from ancient cultures to biodynamic communities. Queen delivers a cohesive message: people of the world must work collaboratively- as the bees themselves- in order to avoid the cataclysmic disappearance of these essential pollinators.

We cannot rely upon scientific strategies alone: doing that keeps us locked in the rationalistic framework that has produced many of our current problems.   The unfolding crisis requires philosophical insight and-heretofore unrecognized- voices to develop applications for change. Einstein was right: it’s impossible to solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.