Pieter-Dirk Uys

Pavement Aristocrats - The Bergies of Cape Town

Looks at a group of homeless people, the Bergies, in Cape Town, South Africa. Through a series of interviews, the film traces the Bergie community back to their Khoisan roots, outlines colonial dispossession, and looks at problems with alcohol dependency. It also gives the community a chance to tell their story, by zooming in on the daily life of two couples

Message to Major

This BBC film, written and performed by South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Ulys, is a video postcard to the British Prime Minister from one Mrs Evita Bezuidenhout, South African ambassador to the fictitious black homeland of Bapetikosweti. Relishing his opportunity to satirise both the new and old South Africa, Dirk Uys delivers a lesson in history

Across the Rubicon

Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African female impersonator/caricaturist whose finely-wrought satirical touring show elucidates apartheid while lampooning it. Uys walks a thin line between censorship and arrest as he occasionally steps out of characters that include P.W. Botha, Desmond Tutu and Margaret Thatcher to deliver pointed attacks on apartheid and the South African government. Uys's popularity with both white and black audiences insulates him somewhat from government interference, but he describes his balancing act as being "like doing the tango in front of a firing squad." Across the Rubicon brilliantly portrays the humor and grace with which Uys makes his contribution to the fight against apartheid.