Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Monkey Talk: An Interview with “Project Nim” Director James Marsh

James Marsh is a humble low-key guy who often explores over-the-top boisterous characters. He’s also equal parts affable and driven, and a filmmaker whose work I’ve been raving about ever since “Man On Wire” rocked my world at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008. Since then I’ve chatted with James about that documentary – that would go on to take the Oscar in 2009 – and more recently about his last foray into fiction filmmaking “Red Riding: 1980,” the second in a stellar three-part trilogy based on David Peace’s novels set during Britain’s seedy “Yorkshire Ripper” days.

So when I saw that the director would be at this year’s Miami International Film Festival to support his Sundance award-winning doc “Project Nim,” which delves into the infamous experiment in the 70s that set out to teach a human-raised chimpanzee to communicate using sign language, I decided to pick his quick-witted brain once again. Sitting in the glorious sunshine outside the fest’s headquarters at the Royal Palm Hotel in South Beach we chatted about everything from “Big Brother” to Bresson to Herzog to uncovering Original Sin.

To read my interview visit Global Comment.

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