Filmmaker and Internet pioneer Tiffany Shlain will be attending the Encounters documentary festival, in Cape Town, this coming week, where she is hosting the continental premiere of her new movie “Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, & Technology”.
The film is both a documentary about how the connected age could reshape our world and a homage to her father, the late author Leonard Shlain. It has won numerous accolades, including the Tribeca Film Festival's Disruptive Innovation Award. She will also be hosting a workshop on her Cloud Filmmaking Manifesto, at the Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking, located at The Foundry, in Green Point, Cape Town.
Shlain has witnessed the growth of much of the modern Internet. In 1996, she co-founded the Webby Awards, which would help chart a level of excellence for online media. Yet despite this continual exposure to the modern Web, she is expecting even bigger and better things from the online world.
“To me, the exciting part is the power with two billion people online - what can you do with it?” she told Brainstorm magazine. It's a concept she explores in “Connected”, taking it even further with her Let It Ripple campaign, a series of short films that are crafted from themed videos submitted by people across the world.
The first, “A Declaration of Interdependence”, has already been voluntarily translated into more than 65 languages. “Brain Power”, the second in the series, is currently in production, and participating videos are being sought for the third, themed around community engagement.
The films are based on her method of Cloud Filmmaking, where content is contributed by willing participants - crowdsourced, so to speak.
“I put a request out into the ether of the Internet - into this amazing network of people who want to make a movie with us, sending us videos and artwork. It's very exciting!”
Tipped by Newsweek as one of the women shaping the 21st century, Shlain has also impressed audiences of TED talks, the BBC and numerous publications, including Vanity Fair and The New York Times. With her visit, the Encounters Festival hopes to bring new thoughts and ideas to local filmmakers and technologists.
The festival runs from today until 27 June in both Cape Town and Johannesburg - more information is available here. Shlain will be featured in the August issue of Brainstorm magazine.
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