by KYW's David Madden
When the Sundance Film Festival opens next week in Utah, a Swarthmore College professor will be on hand to see how his performance in an independent film plays with the entertainment big-shots.
David Harrison (above) is a linguist by profession. He travels the world seeking to document dying languages. Half of the 7,000 languages worldwide, he says, are in danger of extinction due to lack of use.
The film The Linguists depicts what he and a colleague have done over the last couple of years. He says that the crew that followed sometimes got in the way -- but then again...
"They actually opened some doors for us and helped us capture some incredible moments on camera -- such as an old lady who hasn’t spoken a language in decades suddenly remembering a story and singing a song to us. You know, some beautiful moments that we might not have captured otherwise."
Harrison and the filmmaker hope to get what was originally planned as a PBS documentary into theatres across the country, assuming a distributor picks it up.
E-Mail Story
Print Story
