Lights, Camera, Action! On January 25, Rozenn Milin, the director of “Sorosoro, so that the languages of the world may prosper!” launched the first phase of her program to compile a Digital Encyclopedia of Languages. Footage will be gathered in Libreville (Gabon) by chief camerawoman Muriel Lütz and Patrick Mougiama Daouda, linguist from the University of Omar Bongo and the University of Lyon 2. Together they will film two Bantu languages, Benga, spoken by 1500 people in Gabon (and 3,000 in Equatorial Guinea) and Mpongwe, also spoken by several thousand people.

Muriel Lütz and Patrick Mougiama Daouda will film the Cape Bengas (roughly 20 kilometers from the capital city, Libreville) and the Mpongwes on the outskirts of Libreville. They will spend three weeks documenting daily activity (fishing, crafts, cooking, etc.). They will also delve into the secrets of local herbal medicine (gathering plants, brewing remedies, etc.) and record tales, stories, and myths – all the constituents of these populations’ cultural richness.

This first trip should yield a total of sixty hours of rushes from which roughly 15 short films will be edited and broadcasted over the Internet.

Other film shoots in Gabon will fill out this first expedition, especially this summer during the dry season. In another three weeks, another chief operator, José Reynes, will head off to Guatemala to capture the essence of several Mayan languages…