The Quest for Connection

Tiffany Shlain’s newest film, “Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology,” explores the history of human interaction, and the hope that natural and technological connections don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain has been making films for nearly two decades. Somewhere in the middle, when she was 26, she also founded the Webby Awards.

It wasn’t until “Connected” that the filmmaker made the decision to step in front of the camera herself. Says Shlain, “I chose to speak my truth in order to speak to some universal truth. That was my guiding principle.” When she suddenly received news that her father had nine months to live and that she was pregnant with a second child, Shlain decided that telling her own story would ultimately convey the true struggle of what it means to be connected. The film encourages a return to our roots, to the fundamental values of human interaction and the use of social networks as support systems.