Megan Siler is an award winning independent filmmaker who produces, directs and writes both documentary and fiction films. She is currently in development on a television series about the power and perils of connecting in the digital age.

Megan has an MFA from UCLA’s film program, and a BS from UC Berkeley. Her work has screened at festivals internationally and has also been broadcast on public and cable TV. Her last narrative film, And Then Came Lola, (co-produced with Ellen Seidler), screened at festivals internationally and is in worldwide distribution.

Megan’s first feature film, The Midwife’s Tale, won the Emerging Talent Award from Los Angeles Outfest and her short fiction film “First Base” won the UCLA Theater Arts Alumni Spotlight Award.  Megan’s documentary “Toxic Bust: Chemicals and Breast Cancer”, won the Cine Golden Eagle Award and her documentary, Single Mothers: Living On the Edge received a Dore Schary Award.

In addition to her film work, Megan has been teaching screenwriting, film production and broadcast classes throughout the SF Bay Area for over fifteen years.

Ellen Seidler is 35 year film and journalism veteran. She began her career in journalism at ABC News in New York as an assignment editor, and later joined KRON-TV in San Francisco as a photojournalist and editor.  She served as professor of Fine & Media Arts at Contra Costa College for the past 22 years teaching digital film and tv production classes and was a lecturer in Digital Media at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and taught workshops for the Knight Digital Media Center at Berkeley.

Over the past two decades, she has also produced/directed/ and worked as a cinematographer on a variety of independent film and documentary projects. Her directing credits include the award-winning documentary “Fighting for Our Lives-Facing AIDS in San Francisco” and the indie feature “And Then Came Lola”(co-directed/produced with Megan Siler) which screened in LGBT film festivals throughout the world.

Following the release of “And Then Came Lola” in 2010 Seidler began to speak out on the issue of online piracy’s link to profits (via advertising) and created a blog www.popuppirates.com documenting online piracy’s link to profit (via advertising revenue) and its negative impact on content creators.  She has been credited with bringing the issue of ad-sponsored piracy to the fore.

Seidler continues to blog at www.voxindindie.org exploring issues that impact indie artists including piracy, online copyright and content creation. She also works as an anti-piracy consultant, assisting independent film distributors with IP protection, DMCA takedown and Content ID management and monetization.

Seidler is a member of the Advisory Board for the Digital Citizens Alliance and given presentations on piracy and copyright issues at Canadian Music Week, Stanford, UC Davis Law schools and George Mason’s (CPIP) Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property.   In 2011 she was a speaker at Canadian Music Week’s Global Forum and her ongoing anti-piracy efforts have been covered by a variety of news outlets including NPR, Fortune Magazine, and Backstage.

Ellen Seidler received her B.A. in fine arts from Harvard University, and her M.A. in journalism from U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.