| The Linguists | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster forThe Linguists | |
| Directed by | Seth Kramer Daniel A. Miller Jeremy Newberger |
| Written by | Daniel A. Miller |
| Produced by | Seth Kramer Daniel A. Miller Jeremy Newberger |
| Starring | Greg Anderson K. David Harrison |
| Cinematography | Seth Kramer Jeremy Newberger |
| Edited by | Anne Barliant Seth Kramer |
| Music by | Brian Hawlk |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Running time | 64 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Linguists is anindependent 2008 Americandocumentary film produced byIronbound Films aboutlanguage extinction andlanguage documentation. It follows twolinguists,Greg Anderson of theLiving Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages[2] andDavid Harrison ofSwarthmore College,[3] as they travel around the world to collect recordings of some of the last speakers of several moribund (dying) languages:Chulym inSiberia;Chemehuevi inArizona, U.S.;Sora inOdisha, India; andKallawaya inBolivia.[1]
Seth Kramer, one of the directors, describes how he first got the idea forThe Linguists when, inVilnius,Lithuania, he could not readYiddish inscriptions on a path in spite of hisJewish heritage. He joined with Daniel A. Miller in 2003 to form Ironbound Films, and received a $520,000 grant from theNational Science Foundation to support the film.[4] Later in 2003, the directors choseAnderson and Harrison to be the protagonists of the film.[5] In 2004, director Jeremy Newberger joined the project.[4]
It took three years to filmThe Linguists, and during this time over 200 hours of film were collected.[4] During this time, the cast and crew travelled to numerous remote areas that one reporter describes as "godforsaken,"[5] and coped with physical ailments such asaltitude sickness.[4]
The film was completed in August 2007.[4]
The film begins with the fact that a large proportion of the world's languages (half, out of a total of 7,000, according to the film[5]) are going extinct. The film's two protagonists, Anderson and Harrison, set out both to gather recordings of several endangered languages in order to document these languages later, and to educate viewers about the current rate of language extinction.[5] In the process, they travel to theAndes Mountains inSouth America, to villages in Siberia, to English boarding schools inOdisha, India, and to anAmerican Indian reservation inArizona.[1][5]
The film addresses issues including the spread of majorglobal languages and how they contribute to language extinction;[5][6] political and social reasons that some languages have been repressed;[1][7] and reasons thatlanguage revitalization and language documentation are important (including both maintaining a scientific record of that language, and preserving unique local knowledge and history that is only carried in the local language).[4][6]
The film was screened at the2008 Sundance Film Festival,[8] and later had success on the "indie film circuit."[5] It also received attention among the linguistics community on websites such asLanguage Log.[9]
The film has been lauded as "the talk of the town at Sundance;"[10] "a fascinating journey;"[11] "funny, enlightening and ultimately uplifting;"[12] "a hoot;"[13] and “shaggy and bittersweet.”[14] While it received some minor criticism for choppy, confusing editing,[1][8] the subject matter has been called "fascinating"[8] and "compelling,"[15] and the spirit of the film's protagonists has been compared toIndiana Jones.[1]