Articles Written by Director Tiffany Shlain
The full history of women’s leadership hasn’t been told
I’d always thought of myself as a feminist, well-versed in women’s history. But I discovered my knowledge of it was more limited than I realized when I met Laura Liswood in 2015.
Celebrating 20 Years of Tech
The Internet has become an infinitely more exciting place since The Webby Awards started back in 1997. It is now a place where short films can be used to spark global conversations.
Close Quarters: When Tech Companies and an Indie Film Studio Share a Workspace
In 2010, when a friend invited me to move my film studio to a funky refurbished pier in San Francisco with a gaggle of other tech start-ups, I responded with, “You had me at funky.”
Tech’s Best Feature: The Off Switch
It’s Friday evening. The smells of rosemary chicken and freshly-baked challah fill the house. My daughters, 3 and 9, sigh as I gently detach the iPads from their laps. One by one, our screens are powered down. My husband, Ken, is usually the last holdout, in his office, madly scrambling to send out just one last email before the sun sets. Then he unplugs too. We light the candles, and sit down to a sumptuous meal.
How the Internet is Shaping Our “Global Brain”
The South Africans have a beautiful philosophy called Ubuntu, which translates as “I am what I am because of who we all are.” This is a perfect way to think about the way a brain develops, influenced by its surrounding people and experiences.
Get Your Artwork into a Film
We have loved working on our previous films with the Talenthouse community! (In fact our last film where Talenthouse Artists were featured is called Brain Power and was just selected by the US State Department as one of the films to represent America in the 2013-14 American Film Showcase) We are excited to see what you all send in for this one!
Making an “Autoblogography”: Moving From the Third to the First Person
In the 15th century, a Spanish noble woman named Leonor López de Córdoba wrote her “Memorias,” which are considered to be the first autobiography. Since then, writing autobiographies has flourished in literature. Surprisingly, in film, not so much.
Making an ‘Autoblogography’
I never intended to be in my own movie. I have made eight movies and have never made a “personal” film. But I will never forget sitting in the editing room after working on Connected for two years feeling that here I was making a film about what it means to be connected in the 21st century and I was not connecting to the material.
10 Most Romantic Films of All Time
A recent evolutionary study on the large size of the human brain proposes that it did not grow for a greater capacity for knowledge, but for our great need to “connect,” in order to survive as species. The plethora of films that focus on the power of “connection” and the horror of disconnection seem to be a testament of that core desire of humans.
Future of Film: 10 Lessons Learned From Releasing “Connected”
From social media to trailers to the very real need to unplug, the director of this must-see doc for the wired generation talks about what she learned from the distribution process.
The Parallels Between our Highly Wired Minds and Networks
Can we draw instructive parallels between the development of the human brain and the emergence of the electronic global ‘brain’ of the Internet? New research in neuroscience suggests that, yes, we can.
American Film Showcase: ‘Connected’ in Cape Town
From the moment I found out I was being “deployed” to Cape Town, South Africa to screen my film Connected for the US State Department’s American Film Showcase, to the moment I left, it was like watching a scratchy piece of film footage transforming into reality.
Election Day Is a Perfect Time to Think About Our Interdependence
The Fourth of July is about our Declaration of Independence from England 236 years ago, so what if Election Day, on November 6, could be a Declaration of Interdependence: to each other, to our country, to the world and us as a species? While November 6 is our national election, all issues are interdependent and ultimately affect so many things both here and around the world.