By BWilliams / 09:24, 13 April 2004 / General Star Trek

Yahoo! News has confirmed that the Klingon documentary EARTHLINGS: UGLY BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER will premiere May 12-13 at the Cannes Film Market.

EARTHLINGS spotlights the lives, passions, and quirks of the members of the Klingon Language Institute (KLI) during its annual conference. Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, the film shows the link between culture and language, communication and emotion, and the fine line between reality and fantasy, as KLI members talk about what brought them into the language.

"Language fascinates me," says Dr. Lawrence Schoen, the director of the Klingon Language Institute. "By age five, we have learned a lot of our language, and it defines our humanity, forms our society, and helps to develop and transfer our technology."

"EARTHLINGS is not a TREKKIES imitator," says producer Steve Williams, "but instead it's an entertaining view of an intellectual - and sometimes not-so-intellectual - endeavor to sort out and to explore humans and language and the definitions of success and failure."

Film highlights will include musical composer Rich Yampell and the Klingon national anthem "taHaj wo" ("Long Live the Empire"); Dr. d'Armond Speers, a Denver-based linguist who spoke only Klingon to his infant son until he was three and a half; and Michael J. Oetting, a postal worker who attended the 2003 conference to pass a language facility exam.

The Klingon language first appeared in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE in 1979 and was further developed by linguist Marc Okrand for STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK in 1984 and the NEXT GENERATION television series.

To learn more about EARTHLINGS: UGLY BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER, visit the film's official web site.