Ahead of its world premiere at SXSW, a trailer has been released for documentarian Ian Cheney‘s latest film The Arc of Oblivion. Executive produced by Werner Herzog and Sandbox Films (which was recently nominated for an Academy Award for Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love), the film will have its inaugural screening at the festival on March 10. The film’s official synopsis reads: The Arc of Oblivion explores a quirk of humankind: in a universe that erases its tracks, we humans are hellbent on leaving a trace. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker’s quixotic quest to build an ark in […]

Documentarians get their ideas from all sorts of places — newspaper stories, family albums, an overheard story on a train — but rarely does inspiration come from as poetic an activity as stargazing — unless, of course, the documentarian in question happens to be filmmaker Ian Cheney. While gazing at the New York City skyline, Cheney realized that he lived in a place where stars don’t really exist. Determined to find out how much he’s missed when he lost the night sky, he started interviewing scientists for a project that would become The City Dark, a meditation that explores how the […]