Irish Film Institute -DARLING! THE PIETER DIRK UYS STORY

DARLING! THE PIETER DIRK UYS STORY

Director: JULIAN SHAW

AUSTRALIA / SOUTH AFRICA • 2007 • 54MINS


A young Australian high school student is brought to a performance by South Africa’s dame Edna—dame Evita Bezuidenhout. Astonished by the show, he sets out to make a film about the dame and her alter ego Pieter dirk uys, convincing his school board of its validity towards his final exams. visiting Pieter over many years in South Africa, the film follows his quest to teach a nation and its schools about contraception, hiv and AidS. he does so in an entertaining and fabulously unthreatening manner. devoid of any hang-ups on the subject, Pieter dirk uys has been one of the country’s, if not the continent’s, greatest proponents of safe sex and sexual enlightenment. ‘I mean it when I say: You are my hero!’—Nelson Mandela on Pieter Dirk Uys.Screening with…Out in africa. In December 2007, Victor Corrigan from Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh married Kyle Stuart, of Grahamstown, South Africa under the changes in the South African Civil Unions Bill. The wedding took place in Rawsonville, a staunch Afrikaner village, north-east of Cape Town. Here the couple have settled and in the space of three short years turned the town completely on its head. They have subverted all prejudices, broken down all barriers and become the social lynchpins of the community. Brought to you by the producers of Queering the Pitch, Out in Africa explores this phenomenon through the eyes of Victor’s sister Grace and her husband John (a recently retired member of the PSNI), comparing the blossoming liberalisation of this traditionally conservative Afrikaner community, to the creeping right wing, religious and openly hostile attitudes to homosexuality in present day Northern Ireland.

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