Animals Are Beautiful People

Animals Are Beautiful People
DVD release cover
Directed by	Jamie Uys
Written by	Jamie Uys
Produced by	Jamie Uys
Distributed by	Warner Brothers
Release date	1974
Running time	92 min.
Country	South Africa
Language	English

Animals Are Beautiful People (aka Beautiful People) is a 1974 nature documentary about the wildlife in Southern Africa. It was filmed in the Namib Desert, the Kalahari Desert and the Okavango River and Okavango Delta. It was produced for cinema and has a length of slightly more than 90 minutes.

General description

This South African film tells about life in these areas in a humorous way. It was directed and written by Jamie Uys of the Uys family. He is most famous for his film The Gods Must Be Crazy.

The film begins in the Namib desert, with the narrator saying: "You'd think nobody could make a living here." But the film proves the opposite and shows the lives of the animals that live there. The narrator concludes: "But to the Oryx and the little creatures of the Namib, this waterless, hostile desert is paradise."

The second third of the film shows the rich life in the Okavango River and Okavango Delta (see Marula, below), and the last third of the film focuses on life in the Kalahari desert.

Marula

One scene depicts baboons, elephants, giraffes, warthogs and other animals eating rotten, fermented fruit of the Marula tree. The intoxicated animals then stagger around for comic effect. In the morning, we see one baboon wake up, disheveled, next to a warthog, and quietly exit the burrow, as not to wake her. The baboon later remarks to another baboon "I'll never do that again."

Classical music

The film uses classical music and especially well-known pieces to support a scene. A few examples:

• "Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5" with acrobatic baboons
• Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers", showing the miracle of the blooming desert

Featured species

This incomplete list does include almost all mentioned species.

Meerkat Kingfisher Jacana Carp bream Hornbill Oryx

Cheetah Ratel Kudu Secretary Bird Pelican

Turaco Impala Baboon Gekko Sidewinder Egg Eating Snake

Gemsbok Weaverbird Warthog Porcupine Scorpion

Stone Curlew Chameleon Marabou Stork Hyena Duck

Ostrich Lion Wildebeest Zebra Giraffe Elephant

Trivia

• Parts of this film were featured in the 1983 film Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (and were subsequently mocked when that film appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000).

• In this movie, some scenes were shown where elephants, warthogs and monkeys got drunk from eating fermented marula fruit. Later research showed that these scenes were improbable and, in all probability, staged. Elephants would need a huge amount of fermented marulas to have any effect on them, and other animals prefer the ripe fruit. The amount of water drunk by elephants each day would also dilute the effect of the fruit to such an extent that they would not be affected by it.

External links

• Animals Are Beautiful People at IMDb