"A film about the way we talk"24 June 1987Factual57 mins
Rich in humor and regional color, this sometimes hilarious film uses the prism of language to reveal our attitudes about the way other people speak. From Boston Brahmins to Black Louisiana teenagers, from Texas cowboys to New York professionals, American Tongues elicits funny, perceptive, sometimes shocking, and always telling comments on American English in all its diversity. (PBS)
CodeSwitching is a mash-up of personal stories from three generations of African American students who participated in a landmark voluntary desegregation program.
The Grammar Of Happiness follows the story of Daniel Everett among the extraordinary 'nonconvertible' Amazonian Pirah tribe, a group of indigenous hunter- gatherers whose culture and outlook on life has taken the world of linguistics by storm.
Linguist Indrek Park has been working with Native American languages for over ten years. The film sees him recording the language of the Mandan tribe, who live in the prairies of North Dakota, on the banks of the Missouri River.
From the team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child.
The three speakers represent two of the dialects, with the most common one - the middle dialect spoken in Riga and central parts of Latvia - not featured in the film.
Director John Scott crafts this look at the curious life of his longtime friend John Stiles — an aspiring writer and former telephone marketer whose midlife meltdown worked wonders for his career.
Popular movie trailers from 1987
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1987:
This time, Leon Schuster plays a filmmaker who is making a candid camera movie, only to discover that another filmmaker has stolen his ideas and is making the identical picture.
Radha, a young man, visits a village to attend the wedding of his friend's sister. However, when the groom runs away, he is forced to marry the devastated bride.
