End Internet (film trailer), Essay/Fiction Film
Should the death of the Internet occur, archivization would become crucial. What does it mean to archive the Internet? The Internet is ephemeral; information stored as digital codes on servers and hard drives. It only makes sense that elements of the Internet – both information and the websites themselves—be preserved in an archive. Digitally archiving physical materials has become standard practice. Archiving the ephemeral poses a more difficult task.
End Internet explores the idea that violence perpetuates through historical erasure. The archive erases history and is controlled by ruling powers. The film looks at the possibilities that emerge with the Internet to prevent traces of history—particularly elements of quotidian life in digital culture—from being obliterated.
The largest Internet archive to date is the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. The foundation’s goal is to archive digital culture. End Internet loosely identifies the central character, the Archivist, as an employee of the Internet Archive in a dystopian future. She is isolated in the Internet Archive scrambling to preserve the Internet in it’s entirety (an admittedly impossible task), while simultaneously trying to keep her sanity by reaching out to find members of the resistance and editing together traces of Internet history to make narrative sense of her desperate circumstances.
