Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology (2011)

The trailer for this movie suggested that the film would address our dependency on technical connections at the expense of the personal. I was expecting insights, and kept looking for them, but was rewarded only with banal new age platitudes. Notably, a film entitled "Connected" was in the end a DISconnected jumble of points historical, sociological, economic and emotional. It's unfortunate, because the concept for the film was potentially compelling. The director's decision to try to convert that original concept into a sort of tribute to her father proves disastrous. The film ends up being a rambling speech by the director in voice-over, accompanied by repeated clips from family home movies along with an array of stock footage from silent movies and newsreels and a large number of animated graphics which come across mostly as irrelevant distractions. The director's sloppy use of scientific terms and her irrational beliefs about radiation were distracting, but she totally lost me when she insinuated that she believed in auras. There is a certain personality type that will love this film precisely because it is so vague, disorganized and pointless. These people believe that meaning can be extracted from nearly anything. What a disappointing doc. Not recommended.

On one level, the filmmaker does a great job of showing how, through the use of technology, the world is a more connected place. According to her, the number of computers that are connected to the internet is around 2 billion, or roughly a third of the world's population, and there are nearly 5 billion cell phones in use. Those are some incredible numbers.But where I believe the filmmaker fails is pointing out that social media in many ways makes us less social as people, as we become the masters of our own online domain, where narcissism alienates us on many levels from one another.There's no doubt that the internet and the rise in cell phone usage is a game changer the likes we are now beginning to see the consequences of. But the world was never meant to be experienced while sitting in front of high resolution screens which keep us simultaneously connected and disconnected from each other. No matter how great the leap in technology is, the best connections with each other come from actually spending time in real life with each other.

Human responsibility is complex; priorities are often contradictory. In the Twentieth Century, postmodern writers and artists transformed mediums to allow for paradox, but it was not until the twenty-first-century film Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, & Technology that audiences could collectively experience the visual, textual, and emotional beauty of holding complex inconsistencies while moving toward personal growth and global connection. Director Tiffany Shlain exposes the journey by which the global film she set out to make began to kick, cry, and nurse itself into being something more authentic-- more connected--than any one viewer can articulate. Perhaps there's irony in merely writing a review of a film whose visually articulated thesis proposes the new century's possibilities are unleashed by the exponential increase in access to images. Shlain's hypothesis that a technologically interconnected world exercises each individual's image centers can be evidenced now--from the drifts of snow over which Shlain's father first released her from his view to the digitally mastered web of connections that refuse to release the globe from its collective potential, the images in Connected transform viewers into visionaries who don't have to eliminate the contradictions of their connectedness.

Connected is one of those rare films that engages, entertains and makes you continually and thoughtfully ponder long after you've seen it.It is one cleverly interwoven film integrating two constructs: One is a big picture adventurous roller coaster ride utilizing found footage, fabulous animation and music to uniquely give a historical snapshot of globalism, humanism, technology, and the interconnectivity between them all.The other aspect is a lovely, emotionally-charged story of Tiffany Shlain's own personal life as she begins to come to terms with her own connections during a challenging time in her life. Tiffany, filmmaker & founder of the Webby Awards, is a thought leader of innovation and it's fascinating to see someone immersed in 21st century high tech question her own relationship to it and the world as well as the good, bad & potential of all this connectivity.Watch this film! You'll never look at life...or even hugging someone the same again ;)!