Blink Stefaans

Blink Stefaans is a South African Afrikaans film that was released in 1981 and written, directed and produced by Jans Rautenbach.

The film

Fanus (a shortened form of ‘Stefaans’) is a nondescript sound engineer who is never noticed by anyone, especially not by his boss's beautiful but temperamental daughter, Linda. But that all changes with the arrival of Blink Stefaans (‘Shiny Steven’), who has a lot of advice for Fanus – from how he can make money, to how he ought to dress. Fanus follows the advice of Blink Stefaans, and suddenly he gets a lucrative job as a filmmaker and makes friends with the filmmaker's assistant, Chrissie. But then he decides to ignore Blink Stefaans’s advice. He begs Linda, with whom he’s still in love, to be the star of his new Cinderella-style advertisement. But the ad campaign fails, Fanus loses his job, and Chrissie flees to the Cape with a broken heart. Blink Stefaans also abandons Fanus. Will Fanus ever get his happy life back, or do such things only happen in fairy tales?

Production team

Music was by Mynie Grové. cnematography by Paul Marais, film editing by Harry Hughes, and sound by Sid Knowles, John Mayall and Kevin Montanari. Stunts were by stunt performer Roly Jansen and the camera operators were Jakes de Villiers, Nico Oosthuizen and Johan Scheepers. Avril Beukes was the assistant editor and the production assistants of the additional crew were Avril Beukes, Elsa Bijker, Chris Gilliam, Fiona Newport, Karen Pepler, Elsa Pretorius, Charles Vermeulen and Ian Walters.

The cast

The cast includes Regardt van den Bergh (playing both "Fanus Taljaard", the main character and "Blink Stefaans", his alter ego), Zoli Marki ("Chrissie Hofmeyer"), Jana Cilliers ("Linda Rossouw"), George Ballot ("Louis van Schalkwyk"), Zack du Plessis ("JP de Villiers"), Dana Niehaus ("Konsertina Rossouw"), At Botha ("Herman Engelbrecht"), Trix Pienaar ("ballet mistress"), Janice Honeyman ("advertising agent"), Willie Esterhuizen ("dog trainer"), Paul Malherbe ("magistrate"), Mijanou Louwens ("June (Poplap)"), Flip Theron ("Jakes"), Fran Faulkner ("Bokkie"), Isobel Pienaar ("Doctor"), Terry Leon ("Ben"), Tertius Meintjes ("Barry"), Nobby Clark ("singing dog voice artist"), Tracey Ostoloh ("dancer"), Mandy Rothenburg ("Romanoff model"), Hildegard Vogt ("Romanoff"), Aletta Du Toit ("metre maid"), Japie van Niekerk ("Oom Pieter Davel'), Jonathan Bodenstein ("Dick"), Royston Stoffels ("magistrate's court receptionist") and Annelize van der Ryst ("jewellery store assistant").