This 1980 South African comedy became a worldwide minor cult classic on its initial release.
Written, produced, directed, filmed and edited by Jamie Uys, it tells the story of Xi, a Kalahari bushman, who goes on a quest to rid his little idyllic community of a strange evil object which has fallen from the sky - a Coca Cola bottle.
The Kalahari Bushmen, the film's narrator tells us in apseudo-scientific style, are a primitive people who have nothing and need nothing. Their lives are a model of beautiful simplicity. Everything is harmony - they do not fight over possessions because they have none. They have no words for hatred or fear and their lives are untouched by the modern world outside of their desert.
Xi must leave his desert homeland to dispose of the strange object the Gods have sent him. And Xi, played by a remarkably talented natural actor named Nixau, finds that life outside his desert is strange and complicated. He kills a herd-animal to eat and winds up in gaol, slowly starving to death. There are strange taboos in this strange land.
Fortunately, he gains unexpected allies, in the shape of research scientist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers) and his handyman offsider Sam Boga (Louw Verwey). They spring him from gaol, and Xi repays the debt by helping save from death or worse the new schoolteacher Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) and her entire class, who've been kidnapped by rebel soldiers.
The movie features some very nice slapstick acting from Marius Weyers as the research scientist who suffers a bad case of the Laurel and Hardies every time he sees a pretty girl. The entire film is pleasant low-key humour from start to finish - gentle humour, with nothing to offend anyone.
Well, nothing until you realise, care of the accompanying special feature, that the entire movie was based on a lie. There was no beautiful unspoiled community of Kalahari bushmen. The narration introducing them and their lives was invention from start to finish. In reality, the South African society had already invaded the desert. The bushmen, apart from a few trotted out to say "hi" to tourists, were marginalised and starving.
It sort of takes the gloss off the movie, to realise that this picture of the idyllic bushmen was in fact just part of the lies which characterised the South African apartheid-based government.
At the same time, it must be confessed that filmmaker Jamie Uys's invention was a fairly innocent deception - he doesn't, in this movie, portray the bushmen, or research scientist Andrew Steyn's black handyman sidekick Sam Boga, as in any way inferior to the white characters. The story is perpetuating a lie but, paradoxically, in a non-racist way.