Have you ever faked a restroom trip to check your email? Slept with your laptop? Become so overwhelmed that you just unplugged from it all? In her feature directorial debut, CONNECTED, internet pioneer and Webby Award founder Tiffany Shlain’s love-hate relationship with technology serves as the springboard for a thrilling exploration of modern life and our interconnected future. Blending a healthy dose of humor and irony with an imaginative combination of animation and archival footage, the film is equal parts documentary and memoir. Now available to a wide audience, CONNECTED is a chronological tour of Western modernization inspired by the work of Tiffany’s father, Leonard Shlain, a surgeon and best-selling author of Art and Physics and The Alphhabet Versus the Goddess, interwoven with a deeply personal story about a year in the Shlain’s life in which technology and science literally become a matter of life and death..

Just as Tiffany’s film-to-be was underway, two things happened: her father was diagnosed with brain cancer and given only nine months to live, and Tiffany learned that she was expecting a child. What started as a film about connectedness on a global level, turned into something much deeper..

“It was always an exciting moment when I could use an intimate revelation to illuminate a larger one about the world. Or when my personal story intersected with something I was exploring on a global scale,” said Shlain. “’Autoblogography’ is a word I made up in order to convey that the film is autobiographical and that it has to do with technology. It also conveys the humor which became a major thread in the movie.”.

Tiffany Shlain has been busy since CONNECTED world premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival: Her film has released theatrically in the U.S. in 11 cities (held over in 5), has screened more than 1,000 times around the globe – including at more than 200 educational institutions worldwide, and has been selected by the U.S. State Department to represent the States at U.S. embassies around the world as part of its 2012 American Film Showcase. The February 5 release coincides with a special screening of CONNECTED at YouTube’s new Venice, CA-based studio..

She has also released three short films that pick up where CONNECTED leaves off, putting the ideas explored in the film into action with a new way of making films she calls “Cloud Filmmaking,” an experiment in making films through global collaboration. These films include “A Declaration of Interdependence,” “Engage,” and “Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks,” which also includes an accompanying TEDBook. Shlain explains her new process in her “Cloud Filmmaking Manifesto,” which debuted in the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival’s “Future of Film” blog. CONNECTED won a Disruptive Innovation Award at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival..

Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, artist, director of the Moxie Institute, founder of The Webby Awards, co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and has advised Secretary Hillary Clinton on the internet and society. Her 8 films – the last four of which, including CONNECTED, have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival – have won more than 50 awards, including 45 film awards and distinctions including Audience and Grand Jury Prizes. A celebrated thinker and catalyst, Tiffany is known for her ability to illuminate complex ideas in culture, science, technology and life through her unique films, dynamic talks, and innovative projects. She delivered the campus-wide keynote commencement address at UCBerkeley

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