EARTHLINGS - Ugly Bags of Mostly Water

Director: Alexandre O. Philippe
Producer: Steve Williams
Executive Producer: David Marchiori
Running Time: 70 minutes
Produced on: Digital Video
Product Category: Comical Documentary, defined as a Picture Show

Synopsis: (full version)
Every year, members of the Klingon Language Institute meet to celebrate and speak a language from Outer Space. The comical documentary, Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water, captures the life, passions and quirks of the members of the Klingon Language Institute. Interviews of KLI members (Linguists, Psychologists, Star Trek fans and steadfast individualists), reveal the intellectual, fraternal, liberating and no-nonsense, direct qualities they enjoy within the constructed-from-pop-culture Klingon language. From Louise Witty, who becomes fascinated with the language from her interest in Star Trek boots (and then fabricates and sells them) to a Paintball King who shouts strategic, military movements in the Klingon tongue, Earthlings examines the interplay between culture and language, communication and emotion, and the rather delicate line between reality and fiction.

Produced within a visually interesting and texture-filled, Sci-Fi style setting, Earthlings might be categorized as a Picture Show, a highly-stylized subjective documentary that emphasizes specific narrative strands and takes liberty with the tone, pacing and composition for comic effect. This is not a Trekkies (1994) imitator, but instead an entertaining view of an intellectual (and not-so-intellectual) endeavor to sort out and to explore humans and language, and the definitions of success and failure.

In 1979, Paramount Pictures hired Linguist Marc Okrand to develop the Klingon language as realistic dialogue for its first feature-length Star Trek film. He was later asked to expand the language for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). He continues to add to the Klingon vocabulary today.

Earthlings is not a Trekkies (1994) imitator, but instead an entertaining view of an intellectual (and not-so-intellectual) endeavor to sort out and to explore humans and language, and the definitions of success and failure.