Jamie Uys
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Jamie Uys was a South African film director born on 30 May 1921 as Jacobus Johannes Uys. He died on 29 January 1996. He made his debut as a film director in 1965 with the film Dinkgaka. He thereafter directed, inter alia, the following films:
After You, Comrade, in 1967; Lost in the Desert, in 1971; Animals are Beautiful People, in 1974; The Gods Must Be Crazy, in 1979; Beautiful People II, in 1983, and The Gods must be Crazy 2, in 1989.
He completed 24 films. He received the 1981 Grand Prix at the Festival International du Film de Comedy Vevey for The Gods Must Be Crazy, and in 1974 he received the Hollywood Foreign Press Association award for best documentary for Beautiful People.
The two Beautiful People films were documentaries about the plant and animal life in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, especially desert creatures. A highlight was some elephants, warthogs, monkeys and other animals staggering around after eating rotten marula fruit. There was some criticism that some of the scenes were staged, for example the burning of a social weaver nest, as well as the marula scene mentioned above.
Jamie Uys' biggest and most best known movie was The Gods Must Be Crazy. In this movie he used a bushman called N!xau in the lead role. This was a comedy in which a Coke bottle that was thrown out of an aeroplane, fell in the Kalahari desert and was found by the San tribe. As this was the only hard object in their world, it led to strife and it was decided that the bottle had to be returned to the Gods, who had sent it in the first place. The character played by N!xau was given the task to return it.
The movie led to the sequel, which in turn was so popular in Hong Kong that it spawned three more sequels for the Chinese market. One featured a hopping vampire that was dropped into N!xau's tribe.
Uys' other well-known movie was Funny People in 1978, which was a comedy in the same genre as Candid Camera in the US, putting unsuspecting people in embarrassing positions. These included a talking postbox, with the voice of a man claiming to be trapped inside, who asks a passer-by for help. When the passer-by returns with his friends, the 'talking' postbox is silent, and his friends accuse him of being drunk. The sequel, Funny People II was released in 1983, and features a young Arnold Vosloo, who has since found fame in Hollywood.