Summer Screening: The Internet’s Own Boy – The Story of Aaron Swartz

This screening is part of our Summer Season exploring walls, barriers and borders today, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Prior to the screening, from 5.30 – 7.30pm, the club will be open and serving a Happy Hour menu of sharing platters and summer cocktails.

As a teenager, programming prodigy Aaron Swartz took the Internet community by storm. His intellect and understanding matched its most seasoned members. Today, his fingerprints are all over the Internet, from his help in the development of the basic Internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit. But Swartz’s groundbreaking work in social justice, combined with his aggressive approach to information access ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare, with fatal consequences.

In 2011 and 2012, he was indicted by prosecutors who charged him with a staggering number of felonies. Swartz found himself facing 35 years in prison, and at the age of 26 was found dead in his apartment, from an apparent suicide. The Internet’s Own Boy tells the personal and moving story of what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.

Directed by Brian Knappenberger
Duration: 105′
Year: 2014

The Internet’s Own Boy will be released in cinema’s across the UK by Kaleidoscope Film Distribution