Ben Lewis

Indiewire spoke with the directors heading off to Sundance in January to ask them about their films, inspirations, challenges and future ventures.

Ben’s interview was published on the site in January 11th 2013.

London-based documentarian Ben Lewis is heading to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time with his film “Google and the World Brain,” after making films about poverty, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Baader-Meinhof.

What it’s about:  “Google and the World Brain” tracks the Internet conglomerate’s controversial project to upload the world’s written content to its servers.

What the film’s really about: “This film is about what happens when the world’s most austere and fusty of institutions – the library – comes into contact with the world’s most advanced technology – the Internet. It’s about what happens when the oldest technology in the world for disseminating information – the library and the book – comes into contact with the newest, the Internet and the scanner. Above all it is about what happens when you set out to provide people with information for free, without rewarding the information-originators. It is about what might be going wrong with the Internet and how the more freedom you seem to be getting, the more monopolistic the powers that are being built behind the interface.”

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To view the entire article and see the rest of Ben’s answers click here.