Terrace tried to teach Nim to use human language, but, ultimately, found chimpanzees do not have the capacity to use words conversationally. Project Nim is the new documentary about a chimpanzee raised in a human household as part of an experiment to see if chimps could learn language. STEPHEN COLE. Nim Chimpsky has refound fame - albeit posthumous. Herbert Terrace and Nim Chimpsky in 1976. What we learn about his true nature – and indeed our own – is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling. Project Nim is a 2011 British documentary film.It focuses on Project Nim, a research project that was mounted in the 1970s to determine whether a primate raised in close contact with humans could develop a limited "language" based on American Sign Language. Directed by James Marsh, who won an Oscar for his 2008 documentary Man on Wire about another 1970s phenomenon—the French tightrope-walker who … 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. THERE’S SOMETHING a little too clever, a little too cute, about the name that Dr. Herbert Terrace bestowed on the subject of his doomed ape language experiment: Nim Chimpsky. Project Nim a documentary by James Marsh Red Box Films, 93 min. Director James Marsh and two of … Published July 22, 2011 Updated July 22, 2011 . Creation.com. In 1973, Herbert Terrace set out to do what no researcher had accomplished: to teach a chimpanzee to use simple aspects of language. Among the offerings at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is a documentary about a trailblazing chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky who played a key role in … From James Marsh, the man who brought us the brilliant 'Man on Wire' documentary as a 'heist', comes Project Nim about the chimpanzee who was taught by humans to sign as a story of abandonment by (almost) every human who was supposed to care for him. Based on Elizabeth Hess’ book Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, Marsh’s film uses a combination of interviews, archival footage, and reenactments to tell the tale of Nim Chimpsky… This is the story of Nim, the chimpanzee who became the focus of a landmark experiment in the 1970s. Nim Chimpsky is the subject of the documentary "Project Nim." The goal is to answer the question: can a chimp learn language? 'Project Nim' Traces Chimp's Human Life Film director James Marsh described his Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire as a "heist" film. Special to The Globe and Mail . The story of Project Nim, recently popularized by a documentary of the same name, begins with a chimp whose mother is tranquilized so that scientists can take the screaming newborn to a new, human, surrogate mother. Nim Chimpsky was nursed by a human 'mom,' slept in a bed and spoke in sign language, but ultimately died young and alone because he was too wild to be tamed. Project Nim is a critically praised documentary about Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of one of those attempts to teach American Sign Language to an ape, a fad that once fascinated the popular imagination.. (Nim died of a heart attack in 2000, aged 26.) The project was centred on a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky.