Multimedia Gallery - Producer-director Daniel A. Miller describes the film's premiere and what audiences are taking away.

February 18, 2009

Producer-director Daniel A. Miller describes the film's premiere and what audiences are taking away.

Producer-director Daniel A. Miller describes the film's premiere at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and what audiences around the world are taking away with them.

Credit: National Science Foundation

Daniel Miller: Our film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2008. 2008 was the international year of languages, and to end that big year, the UN is premiering "The Linguists" at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. It's premiering the day before International Mother Language Day on February 20.

Well, we tried to make this film as accessible to as large an audience as possible. So there's a few things that various audiences can take away from this film. One is to get excited about languages and the science of studying languages--maybe becoming more involved in the science of studying languages, learning it, learning what it is about, may be even becoming a linguist.

I think a lot of people who watch the film say oh the funny way that my grandparents speak; what was that all about? Now for first time it gives the way they speak a value and it gets people excited about their heritage and their culture.

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