The Journal News, December 7, 2008
Sundance filmmakers screen dying tongues in Peekskill

Barbara Livingston Nackman

Garrison — Independent filmmakers who debuted their documentary about dying languages at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year will finally get a chance to show their film to a broad local audience today in Peekskill.

It will be during Westchester Arts Council's all-day free arts event.

"The Linguists," a 70-minute film about the thousands of indigenous tongues on the verge of extinction because native speakers are dying out, was put together by Ironbound Films of Garrison.

Daniel A. Miller of Cold Spring; Seth Kramer of Red Hook, N.Y.; and Jeremy Newberger of Yorktown Heights led the project that followed two academics on their investigations. They found nearly 3,500 of the world's roughly 7,000 languages are vanishing and some don't have written versions.

"The Linguists" was first shown this January at Sundance in Utah during Documentary Spotlight, a noncompetitive showcase.

"It is gradually building momentum," Miller said of the 2007 film. Also today, the three filmmakers will participate in a question-and-answer segment with featured linguist David Harrison.

The film will also be shown in European theaters Feb. 21 during UNESCO-sponsored Mother Language Day, at Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville Feb. 24, and on PBS stations Feb. 26.

"The movie is a laugh-getter and tear-jerker. Hearing the audience roar at key moments is a thrill," Miller added. "Endangered languages is not a film you would expect to have yuks in it."

The Paramount's film program manager thinks "The Linguists" will be a crowd pleaser in the center's large, historic theater. "It is funny and has everything in it - adventure, laughs and intellectual ideas about saving languages. It is a perfect hybrid about unique languages," said Ron Kopp.

He said Ironbound had wanted to rent the large theater for a private screening, but once they were invited to Sundance they had to wait because of Sundance rules. Showing it during Westchester Arts Day is a perfect fit, Kopp said.

The Westchester Arts Council assembled today's events and felt the film fit in nicely.

"The great thing about the day is that it gives the artists an opportunity to showcase and people an opportunity to see things they wouldn't ordinarily see," executive director Janet Langsam said.

She said it works with the group's theme - to highlight arts organizations and local artists and diversity.

Ironbound's filmmakers have other projects in the works, including a documentary about recent business school graduates, who instead of becoming big-time executives or bankers, are working in underdeveloped nations creating small businesses that provide a needed commodity or service. The entrepreneurs in "New Recruits" have businesses that offer pay toilets in Kenya slums and environmentally friendly street lighting in Delhi, India, for example.

On a pop-culture level, Ironbound is also working on a film about 1980s phenom Morton Downey Jr., a brash talk-show host considered a precursor to Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Springer.

(Photo by Stephen Schmitt/ The Journal News: Jeremy Newberger, left, of Yorktown Heights; Daniel Miller of Cold Spring; and Seth Kramer from Red Hook, N.Y., shown in October, have just finished a documentary on the world's dying languages.)