mouthbreather

Overview

Shot on Bidayǔh lands in Malaysian Borneo, mouthbreather is a meditation on Baker’s fraught but fulfilling journey re-learning her mother’s native tongue. Bukar Bidayǔh is an endangered Indigenous language spoken by approximately 50,000 people who live in villages at the base of the Bung Sadung mountain range in south-western Sarawak. Through a process of re-learning to think and speak in language, opportunities to communicate through time emerge. Mouthbreather is a reflection on the power of speaking language on the lands it arose from, and the relationship between naming, knowing and seeing.