OUR MISSION
OUR HISTORY
Our principals have stayed consistent over the years with hyper focus on the educational market so filmmakers can work collaboratively with aggregators and consumer distributors in the hybrid release ecosystem. Our partner organizations like Kanopy, Midwest Tape, and Alexander Street press all operate strictly in the educational space with us so our filmmakers can still pursue broadcast and SVOD deals in the domestic and international markets. While we do take exclusive educational rights, we work with all our filmmakers non-exclusively for non-theatrical screenings. We believe that a filmmaker should never lose the right to screen their film, no matter what distribution route you’ve chosen.
MEET THE BOARD
Collective Eye Films is a 501c3 Non-Profit Organization
Taggart Siegel
Founder & Chair of the Board
Taggart is the founder and Chair of the Board for Collective Eye Films. Siegel produced and directed Emmy-nominated, award-winning documentaries for 30 years, including Seed: The Untold Story, Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? and The Real Dirt on Farmer John.
Sophie Constantinou
Member of the Board
With over 20 years of cinematography experience, her work is guided by the belief that participatory documentary storytelling is a powerful tool for catalyzing place-based change and creating healthy, sustainable communities. She is the founder of Citizen Film.
Christopher Upham
Member of the Board
A writer-director and story consultant living in San Francisco. Mr. Upham is on Staff at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Screenwriting program and teaches workshops in Screenwriting and Visual Storytelling.
LEADERSHIP
James-Michael Boyer
Director of Operations
James-Michael Boyer is the Director of Operations at Collective Eye Films and has spent the last 6 years in the educational distribution space, working collaboratively with filmmakers to produce robust educational and non-theatrical campaigns. He serves on the board of directors for the VideoTrust organization, has spoken at ArtHouse Education, the UFVA, presented on a variety of documentary distribution panels, and led distribution focused workshops and seminars in the Portland film community.
Kanani Koster
Acquisitions and Impact Manager
Kanani Koster is the Impact and Acquisitions Manager for Collective Eye Films. She has spoken on numerous panels on race, diversity and representation in film. Kanani is the 2020 Oregon Made Film Grant winner for the docu-short, Any Oregon Sunday, and a 2020 Portland Arts Museum Re:Imagined Artist recipient. She has worked in the marketing and outreach department for both Seattle International Film Festival and the Northwest Film Center. As the Impact Manager for Collective Eye she has implemented campaigns for Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America and other catalogue films focusing on community driven social change and partnerships with notable organizations like ACLU and NAPW.
Diversity Audit
Audit by Kanani Koster, July 25, 2022
At Collective Eye, we have made it a point to both challenge and check our biases specifically within our catalogue. Documentary film has always been a place to learn more about the world but historically that has not meant those diverse stories and narratives are represented behind the camera. The impact a director has in understanding and telling authentic stories is undeniable and it is imperative we, and all distributors, make a concerted effort in finding and supporting those voices.
With our Director Diversity Audit we examined our catalogue to see improvements we've made under new leadership as well as what we will continue to work on. That being said, the work is never done. Moving forward we're looking to meet gender parity and continue to support BIPOC and Queer voices as well as focusing on people with disabilities in telling their own stories.