Project Nim (2011) is the documentary retelling of the extraordinary life of chimpanzee, Nim Chimpsky. He is one of the most famous primates of the 20th century, definitely up there with Cheetah, Coco and Clyde, thanks largely to the experiment that was his life.
The experiment, which began at Columbia University in the 1970s, was to investigate the possibility of bringing up a chimpanzee as a human child to discover whether or not he would develop human language in the form of American sign language.
It was designed to build upon earlier findings from similar initiatives, like Project Washoe, but mainly in an attempt to disprove Noam Chompsky, the linguistic scientist, and his assertion that language is unique to humans and humans alone. The name Nim Chimpsky is a play on words of Noam Chompsky, don’t ya know.
Project Nim has a 10th June 2011 release date in the UK, and it opened to much critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival back in January, with an average rating of four stars. Directed by James Marsh, who also brought us the Oscar winning Man on Wire, the documentary owes a lot to the Elizabeth Hess book, Nim Chimpsky: The Chip Who Would Be Human. It contains interviews with all of the Project Nim team and archive footage of the development of the project. It will be interesting to see how the film discusses the morality of the project.
