The Arc of Oblivion

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 a field in Maine, the film heads far afield - to salt mines in the Alps, fjords in the Arctic, and ancient libraries in the Sahara - to illuminate the strange world of archives, record-keeping, and memory.

Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. He has completed eleven feature documentaries, including King Corn (2007), The Greening of Southie (2008), The City Dark (2011), The Search for General Tso (2014), Bluespace (2015), The Most Unknown (2018), The Emoji Story (2019), Thirteen Ways (2019), Picture a Scientist (2020), The Long Coast (2020), and The Arc of Oblivion (2023). His short films include Two Buckets (2006), Truck Farm (2010), The Melungeons (2013), The Smog of the Sea (2016), The Measure of a Fog (2017) and Fight Like Hell (2023). He received bachelor’s & master’s degrees from Yale University, and an MFA in Film from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.A former MacDowell Fellow & Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, he lives in midcoast Maine.