There’s no good way to summarize the plethora of information presented last Saturday at TFI Interactive, a full-day conference held, for the second time, during the Tribeca Film Festival. Organized by the omnipresent Ingrid Kopp (who was recently interviewed by the MIT Open Documentary Lab), the day took place at the IAC Building in lower Manhattan, not far from most of the festival’s screenings and the Storyscapes interactive exhibits that Kopp also curated. Over 20 presentations covered dozens of individual projects, discussed entities like Kickstarter, the NFB, and IDFA DocLabs, and included panel discussions on creating adventure video games (think The […]
by Randy Astle on Apr 24, 2013“Some films go deep,” filmmaker Tiffany Shlain said at the Sundance premiere of her documentary, Connected. “Mine goes wide.” Indeed, Shlain’s film does go wide — it’s like a rubber band stretching in multiple directions while not breaking. Examining the ways in which technology can productively unite our global citizenry, Connected details nothing less than the history of consciousness and its arrival within today’s always-on, hyper-wired mind. Through voiceover narration and breezy montage, Connected explores the right brain/left brain split and its effect on social and economic organization, and it highlights the transformative potential of today’s communication tools. As a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 16, 2011At a Los Angeles press conference today, Sundance Institute Executive Director Keri Putnam announced an expansion of the organization’s Artist Services Initiative that will bring independent films to digital platforms. Exclusively partnering with aggregator New Video, Sundance is offering its festival and lab films distribution opportunities on iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and SundanceNOW. Filmmakers will retain ownership and control of their titles, will be free to publicize and market them, and Sundance will conduct its own marketing efforts as well as leverage the potency of its brand to gain the films wider audiences. Commented Putnam, “By acting as a conduit […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 27, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre] When I set out to make Connected, the original tagline was A Declaration of Interdependence. I set out to make an insightful/funny/provocative film that looks at what it means to be connected in the 21st century by exploring the history of interdependence and how it has changed over time. That was my pitch, that was our focus, that’s the film I thought I was going to make. At one point, we had an 80-minute rough cut and I watched it in one sitting (one rarely gets to do that on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2011Filmmaker and Webby Founder Tiffany Shlain gave this year’s UC Berkeley commencement address in front of 11,500 people at the Haas Pavilion. Her speech mixes a tale of her personal journey with a call to make the most of the connected world the Internet has offered us. The speech ends with a short film and then Shlain dispatched her film crews to interview graduates about their hopes for the future. “I believe if you can name it, you are that much closer to making it happen,” she said. Her speech is below.
by Scott Macaulay on May 30, 2010