Artist Statment – Honors & Distinctions
Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, founder of the Webby Awards, and co-founder of The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. 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’s delivered the keynote commencement address at UCBerkeley and her films and work have received 50 awards and distinctions. Her last four films premiered at Sundance, including her 2011 acclaimed feature documentary, Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology, which The New York Times hailed as “Examining Everything From the Big Bang to Twitter,” and the US State Department just selected as one of the films to screen at embassies around the world in their 2012 American Film Showcase. She is currently working on a new film series which is paving the way for a new kind of collaborative filmmaking she calls CLOUD FILMMAKING. The series, titled “Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change,” will include twenty short 4-minute films about important aspects of life. The first film, A Declaration of Interdependence, with music by Moby, has been translated into 65 languages and she is currently creating free customized versions of the film for any nonprofit. The next film in the series that Tiffany and her film studio are in production on is Brain Power, which explores the best way to nurture young children’s brains as well as the global brain we are creating via the Internet.
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*More Detailed Bio*
Honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century,” Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, artist, founder of The Webby Awards, and co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and was recently the campus-wide commencement speaker for UCBerkeley.
Her films have been selected at over 100 film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, and Rotterdam, have won 30 awards including Audience and Grand Jury Prizes, been translated into 8 languages, and been shown at museums including LACMA and Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. Tiffany’s films are a fusion of documentary and narrative and are known for their whimsical yet provocative approach to unraveling complicated subjects like politics, cultural identity, technology and science. Her films include Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness about reproductive rights in America, and The Tribe, an exploration of American Jewish identity through the history of the Barbie doll, the first documentary short to become the #1 on iTunes. She recently made, Yelp: With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, about our addiction to technology and the importance of occasionally “unplugging,’ which was selected as finalist for Guggenheim Museum & Youtube’s YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video and for Sundance 2011. As a director for both theater and film, she has worked with Harrison Ford, Peter Coyote and Alan Cumming and was selected as an Artist-in-Residence at the Headland Center for the Arts and for a film residency at the San Francisco Film Society. Tiffany’s films and discussion programs have been used in many diverse settings to spark dialogues about social issues. She has been singled out by The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and The Sundance Institute for her cutting-edge work using documentaries and Internet distribution in unique ways to engage audiences. A sought-after keynote speaker known for her visual presentations, she lectures worldwide on filmmaking and the Internet’s influence on society. Invitations include Harvard, Nasa, Apple theaters in NYC and SF, The Idea Festival, Fortune 500 companies, the 92nd St Y in NYC, MIT and The Sydney Opera House. She received a standing ovation from over 11,000 people after she delivered the keynote address for University of California, Berkeley’s commencement ceremony in May 2010.
Tiffany founded The Webby Awards in 1996 and was creative director and/or the producer for nearly a decade, establishing it into a global organization honoring the best of the Internet. The Webbys receive over 10,000 entries annually and are presented annually in NYC. She co-founded The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, today a 550-person organization and served as the on-air Internet expert for Good Morning America from 2000 to 2003. Her work with The Webbys has been profiled on The New York Times, The BBC, ABC, MTV, CNN, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and NPR. The 15th Annual Webby Awards were held June 2011.
Tiffany is a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute. She is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley where she was selected as a valedictorian speaker for the interdisciplinary studies department and received the highest honor in art, The Eisner Award, for filmmaking. She received her BA in film theory in the interdisciplinary studies department in 1992. She studied organizational change at Harvard Business School Executive Education and film production at New York University’s Sight & Sound program in 1990. Tiffany is a ranking Advisory Board Member of a multi-university Leadership Committee, which oversees a global research partnership that includes the MIT Engineering Systems Division’s MIT Geospatial Data Center, Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation at Saïd Business School, U.C. Berkeley’s Center for New Media and others working towards the transparency and security of data to effectuate positive social change.
She serves on the advisory boards of The San Francisco Film Festival’s Filmmaker Advisory Committee and has served on the advisor boards for The UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media, The Fledging Fund and on the board of The Commonwealth Club. She currently advises with Web 2.0 Conference, The Institute for the Future and served on California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s transition team. In 2010, she was invited to advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on technology and society.
Tiffany is director of The Moxie Institute, an organization that creates films, discussion programs, theater experiences, and Internet experiments around social issues using emerging technologies. She has received 44 awards and distinctions during the course of her career for her work as a filmmaker, artist, internet advocate, leader and activist. Tiffany writes a quarterly newsletter called “Breakfast @ Tiffany’s.” and contributes to the Huffington Post.
Her feature documentary, Connected, premiered in the US Documentary Competition at Sundance 2011 and was selected by the US State Dept and USC for the 2012 American Film Showcase. She was the only director to have two films at Sundance in 2011. Connected had its theatrical run in the fall of 2011. The Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences recently acquired the script for Connected to be part of their permanent Core Collection. Her video art installation, “Smashing,” with artist and husband Professor Ken Goldberg, premiered in NYC at the Pulse Contemporary Art Fair. Tiffany and Ken have two children and live in Northern California.
