The Last Speaker: South Africa’s dying language
Compiling a dictionary of click-based words, Claudia works to save her grandmother’s dying San, or Bushman, language.
Claudia Snyman is a language researcher in South Africa and her grandmother, Katrina Esau, is the last remaining fluent speaker of N|uu, the ancient language of the San, or Bushman, people.
Together they work painstakingly on a dictionary of the click-based words of this disappearing language, believed to be 25,000 years old. Once oppressed and derided in colonial times, they are determined that it will come back from the brink of extinction and into modern-day use.
Nadine Angel Cloete is an award-winning South African filmmaker who focuses on themes of identity and history. Her feature documentary, Action Kommandant, won several awards across Africa and the United States. She also directs fiction films.