The Broken String - Het Verhaal van een Verloren Taal plot
Documentary about The Bleek & Lloyd Archive, the written memory of the language of the /Xam, the original inhabitants of northern South Africa. The 150 notebooks with /Xam and the English translation next to it were rediscovered around 1990 and are now part of The Unesco Memory of the World. The German scientist Wilhelm Bleek and his sister-in-law Emily Lloyd recorded an unknown language full of clicks. It was the time of Darwin and he thought he could get closer to the origin of man through an ancient language. In a notebook he invented himself, he recorded the words, but also the stories that had been passed on from generation to generation. The Broken String shows how Bleek and Lloyd captured the language by taking in a 55-year-old prisoner. The culture of the /Xam is also discussed and the way in which the Boers committed genocide against them.