Jamie Uys
| Jamie Uys | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Jacobus Johannes Uys 30 May 1921 Boksburg, South Africa |
| Died | 29 January 1996 (aged 74) Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Spouse(s) | Hettie Uys |
Jacobus Johannes Uys (30 May 1921 – 29 January 1996), better known as Jamie Uys, was a South African film director, best known for directing The Gods Must Be Crazy.
Before his foray into film, Uys was a mathematics teacher in his hometown of Boksburg. He then married Hettie, a fellow mathematics teacher and the couple started farming and opening trading posts along the Palala River. He was later appointed local magistrate and Justice of the Peace. In an interview, he stated, "Every Tuesday I crossed the wildest country and swam through rivers to get to the police post where I could hold court".
He made his debut as a film director in 1951 with the Afrikaans-language film Daar doer in die bosveld. He directed 24 films.
Uys 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, Botswana and Zimbabwe, especially desert creatures. A highlight of the film included a scene with elephants, warthogs, monkeys and other animals staggering around after eating rotten, fermented marula fruit.
Jamie Uys's biggest and best known movie was The Gods Must Be Crazy. In this film he featured a Bushman called N!xau in the lead role. This was a comedy in which a Coca-Cola 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 "modern" object in their world, it led to strife and it was decided that the bottle had to be returned to the Gods, who must have sent it in the first place. The character played by N!xau was given the task to return it. The movie generated extensive word-of-mouth success in Europe, Japan and North America, with the movie rights initially being sold to 45 countries. It spawned a less successful sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II.
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