Directed by: James Marsh
Staring: Nim Chimpsky, Stephanie LaFarge and Herbert Terrace
Directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire) Project Nim is a documentary that features the chimpanzee Nim who was the subject of a research project in the 1970’s.
Shortly after his birth he was removed from his mother and delivered to New York, where he became part of an experiment to determine whether an ape raised in close contact with humans could develop a limited language based on American Sign Language. 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.