The
Tribe (Sundance Film Festival Selection 2006) is a very
intense short documentary film about what it means to be Jewish.
Interview by Marisa Darnel
The fact that the number one American symbolic pop icon, the Barbie doll, was created by a Jewish lady (Ruth Handler) is the base on which Tiffany Shlain and everybody in the large group that collaborated with her could build up this film, which is so rich in content.
The impressive combination of images, music, the narrative of Emmy Award-winning actor Peter Coyote and the poetry reciting of Vanessa Hidary, makes the documentary a unique experience. The audience laughed with the Jewish sense of humor and was amazed at all the information about the Jew's contribution to diverse areas such as: social, political, scientific and artistic. They were also moved with the drama of their history.
Tiffany's career is guided by a passion for unraveling complex ideas, Internet, art, politics and religion in unorthodox, highly entertaining ways. She is the founder of The Webby Awards, at the beginning of the Internet and co-founded of The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences in 1998.
Her previous films: Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness and Less is More, her lectures in different Universities and her participation as a Fellow at the Woodhull Institute show how truly interested she is in social justice.
Tiffany is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she was selected as a valedictorian speaker and she studied film theory at UC Berkeley and film production at NYU.
She lives in San Francisco with her husband Ken Goldberg, an artist and Professor of Robotics at UC Berkeley, who was her co-writer for The Tribe. They have a 3 year old daughter Odessa Simone.
Tiffany's work was profiled in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The International Herald Tribune among many other publications. She has been featured on Good Morning America, NPR and CNN. Honored as one of Newsweek's "Women Shaping the 21st Century." She is an outstanding inspiration for all women as a restless and creative professional, a wife and a mother.
