Arrival

Arrival 2016

7.60

Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.

2016

Spinning Man

Spinning Man 2018

5.57

Evan Birch is a family man and esteemed professor at a distinguished university. When a female student goes missing, police Detective Malloy has reason to be suspicious when crucial evidence makes Evan the prime suspect in her disappearance.

2018

Project Nim

Project Nim 2011

6.80

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. Following Nim's extraordinary journey through human society, and the enduring impact he makes on the people he meets along the way, the film is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal we tried to make human. What we learn about his true nature - and indeed our own - is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling.

2011

Do I Sound Gay?

Do I Sound Gay? 2015

5.62

What makes a voice “gay”? A breakup with his boyfriend sets journalist David Thorpe on a quest to unravel a linguistic mystery.

2015

Mockingbird Don't Sing

Mockingbird Don't Sing 2001

6.40

The tragic true story of one of the worst cases of child abuse ever documented (in which a girl was locked in a room without social contact for nearly thirteen years) and what happened when she was finally rescued.

2001

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? 2013

6.90

A series of interviews featuring linguist, philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky done in hand-drawn animation.

2013

We Will Speak

We Will Speak 2023

10.00

The Cherokee language is deeply tied to Cherokee identity; yet generations of assimilation efforts by the U.S. government and anti-Indigenous stigmas have forced the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a State of Emergency for the language in 2019. While there are 430,000 Cherokee citizens in the three federally recognized tribes, fewer than an estimated 2,000 fluent speakers remain—the majority of whom are elderly. The covid pandemic has unfortunately hastened the course. Language activists, artists, and the youth must now lead the charge of urgent radical revitalization efforts to help save the language from the brink of extinction.

2023

Wave

Wave 2017

5.20

A man wakes from a coma speaking a fully formed but unrecognizable language baffling linguistic experts from around the globe.

2017

Noam Chomsky: Knowledge and Power

Noam Chomsky: Knowledge and Power 2015

10.00

An in-depth look at the work and views of the man described as 'one of the greatest minds in human history'. He first emerged through his pioneering work in linguistics in the 1950s but later became a political activist and a critic of US foreign policy in Vietnam, its neo-liberal capitalism, and mainstream media. Consisting primarily of interviews with Chomsky and other writers, academics, philosophers, social commentators and broadcasters, this film explores the breadth, originality and importance of his work; and the alternative narratives he has advanced at some of the most critical periods in recent history.

2015

What She Said

What She Said 2021

6.70

Sam decides to stop pursuing charges against her rapist and spend Thanksgiving alone on her family's Virginia farm. Her brother stages an intervention with seven of Sam’s friends to persuade her to return.

2021

The Unanswered Question I : Musical Phonology

The Unanswered Question I : Musical Phonology 1976

9.00

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse: Phonology is the linguistic study of sounds, or phonemes. Bernstein's application of this term to music results in what he calls "musical phonology".

1976

The Unanswered Question IV : The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity

The Unanswered Question IV : The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity 1976

9.00

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse: Bernstein provides two distinct meanings of the term ambiguity. The first is "doubtful or uncertain" and the second, "capable of being understood in two or more possible senses"

1976

American Tongues

American Tongues 1987

7.00

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)

1987

Marc Okrand on Klingon

Marc Okrand on Klingon 2002

1

Marc Okrand discusses his involvement with the Star Trek franchise and his work on inventing the Klingon and Vulcan languages.

2002

The Unanswered Question II : Musical Syntax

The Unanswered Question II : Musical Syntax 1976

9.00

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse: Syntax refers to the study of the structural organization of a sentence, or as Bernstein summarizes, "the actual structures that arise from that phonological stuff."

1976

The Grammar of Happiness

The Grammar of Happiness 2012

8.00

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. As a young ambitious missionary three decades ago, Dan, a red-bearded towering American, decamped to the Amazon rain forest to save indigenous souls. His assignment was to translate the book of Mark into the tongue of the Pirah, a people whose puzzling speech seemed unrelated to any other on Earth. What he learned during his time with the Pirah led him to question the very foundations of his own deep beliefs. As a 'born again' atheist, Dan divorced his devout Christian wife and became estranged from his children. Having lost faith and family, his new life is dominated by the desire to leave behind his legacy. Everett's most controversial claim is that the Pirah language lacks 'recursion' - the ability to build an infinite number of sentences.

2012

Involuntary Conversion

Involuntary Conversion 1991

1

This apocalyptic linguistic comedy meditates on the relationship between language, meaning and social decay and is scripted from "double-speak" language found in a variety of media sources. Drawing its title from the Pentagon's term for crash, Involuntary Conversion evokes the hollowness and free-floating anxiety that characterizes late 20th century culture. In a voice that could belong to a hypnotist or a government spokesman, a disembodied speaker recounts a string of events whose common thread is a sense of impending disaster. The mood is suspended somewhere between nightmare and deadpan and is propelled by a narrative as enigmatic as the language it exposes. The iconic shape of a fighter jet floating in a perfect sky has the creepy feel of a video game and the texture of television is used to make the images feel domestically ingrained.

1991

At a Traffic Light

At a Traffic Light 2024

1

We all have a dream... Nelson's dream is to learn how to read. He works at a traffic light in Maputo selling car products to people who stop. Every week a teacher joins him and all the others like him to teach them. With the hope of learning, Nelson never misses a class. It is with the hope of better days that Nelson lives.

2024

Yeah You Rite!

Yeah You Rite! 1985

8.00

This award winning film is a fast paced, humorous look at the colorful way the residents of New Orleans express themselves - why they talk the way they do, where the words come from, and what it means to talk with a New Orleans accent.

1985

The Unanswered Question III : Musical Semantics

The Unanswered Question III : Musical Semantics 1976

9.00

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse:Semantics is the study of meaning in language, and Bernstein's third lecture, "musical semantics", accordingly, is Bernstein's first attempt to explain meaning in music. Although Bernstein defines musical semantics as "meaning, both musical and extramusical" this lecture focuses exclusively on the "musical" version of meaning.

1976

Spell-Mageddon

Spell-Mageddon 2013

1

Spell-Mageddon is an American spelling bee game show on ABC Family and is hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro. It premiered on July 24, 2013. Its season finale aired on September 11, 2013.

2013

Crash Course Linguistics

Crash Course Linguistics 2020

1

Welcome to Crash Course Linguistics! Linguistics is everywhere and is super useful for pretty much everyone. Over 16 episodes, Taylor Behnke will teach you all about language, from its structure, to the relationship between language and our identity, the brain, and computers, to writing, language acquisition, and the diversity of human languages!

2020

Wordplay

Wordplay 1986

0.50

Wordplay is an American game show which ran on NBC from December 29, 1986 to September 4, 1987. It was hosted by Tom Kennedy and announced by Charlie O'Donnell. The show was produced by Scotti Bros.-Syd Vinnedge Television in association with Fiedler-Berlin Productions and Rick Ambrose Productions. The show is notable for replacing the long-running soap opera Search For Tomorrow on the NBC schedule.

1986