Gathr Films Promotes Jake Craven to President and Max Katz to CTO
Los Angeles, January 12, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Gathr Films today announced Jake Craven has been promoted to President, and Max Katz has been promoted to CTO.
Since joining Gathr in May 2013, Craven has helmed Gathr’s Acquisition Department and overseen distributor partnerships and/or acquisitions for most of Gathr's films, including The Square, Frame By Frame, Can You Dig This, Consumed, Minimalism: A Film About The Important Things, Awake: The Life Of Yogananda and Beyond The Mask. As Head of Acquisitions and Business Affairs, Craven managed the negotiation and documentation of all of Gathr’s film and social impact activities as well as educating filmmakers and industry professionals on Gathr’s unique distribution model through public speaking engagements at festivals and events around the country.
Katz brings nearly two decades of professional development experience to Gathr. With a world-class client list including giants like DirecTV, Disney and IBM as well as a host of Los Angeles-area startups, he has been successful in building and scaling technology solutions and teams at all stages of the business cycle. In his first month at Gathr, he cut IT infrastructure costs by more than half, and has since succeeded in conceiving and executing a broad range of business process automation, tracking and analytics initiatives with a focus on improving Gathr's scalability. He has also increased booking automation – 43% of Gathr screening requests now go live automatically.
“Jake has been with Gathr Films since the beginning, and his deal-making skills, legal acumen and creative taste are helping to elevate Gathr towards new areas of opportunity. And with a year under his belt, Max now has a vast understanding of our tech, our business needs and priorities, and the tech road-map and cost/benefit necessary to pursue them,” said Scott Glosserman, Gathr Films Founder and CEO. “As Jake and Max have become instrumental in Gathr’s decision-making process it's high time we acknowledge their responsibilities with the appropriate titles.”
Gathr Films is a technology-based specialty theatrical distributor focusing on documentaries and issues-oriented films. Gathr pioneered Theatrical On Demand® in 2011. TOD screenings harness organic demand – screenings occur when a minimum number of people reserve tickets in advance for a screening request. The company works with more than 3,000 theaters across all the major theater chains including Regal, AMC, Carmike, Cinemark, Marcus, and Wehrenberg. The company implements a double bottom line strategy. Gathr uses political-style grassroots coalition-building to target decentralized communities to galvanize their supporters and communities around social impact and political action. Gathr also works with some of the largest and most prestigious brands and organizations to build national coalitions with our films including Unicef, UN Foundation, Just Label It, Faces and Voices of Recovery, and National Association of Social Workers. Films distributed through TOD include Girl Rising (4th highest grossing documentary of 2013), Awake: The Life of Yogananda ($1.4 million in revenue), Beyond the Mask (700+ screenings), The Square (2014 Oscar® nominee), The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2015 Oscar® nominee) and The Anonymous People (200+ screenings). Current films include Can You Dig This, Consumed, Frame by Frame, Finding Jenn’s Voice, Life in A Walk, Milk, and The Prophet. Gathr Films is located in Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington DC. www.gathr.us
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