Daily Archives: January 20, 2021

Animals Are Beautiful People (1974)

Animals Are Beautiful People
Directed by Jamie Uys
Written by Jamie Uys
South Africa/1974
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

 

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists. — H. Allen Smith

This documentary takes an amusing look at the animals of the African desert.

This nature documentary looks at wildlife of the Namib and Kahlihari deserts and how they survive with minimal water in bad times and luxuriate during the rainy season.  Apparently, many of the scenes were staged.   This did make for a really humorous movie however.

Uys also directed The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), a movie close to my heart, and this documentary has lot  of that film’s charm.  The nature photography is interesting and beautiful.  I would not recommend this to the student of actual animal behavior but it’s a pretty fun watch.