Elmo de Witt
Elmo de Witt (b. 18/03/1935 – d. Uvongo, 31/04/2011). Producer, director, editor, cinematographer.
Biography
Elmo Andre de Witt was still a schoolboy when a short film he and his friends had made won an award from the Pretoria Cine Club. As a young man he joined Jamie Uys Filmproduksies and was only 24 when he directed his first feature, Satanskoraal (1959). Over the years he made many popular films, sometimes picking subjects that led to criticism from a still conservative Afrikaans establishment. These included Debbie (1965), in which Suzanne van Oudtshoorn played an unmarried mother, Ter Wille van Christine (1975), in which Hans Strydom as a NGK dominee falls in love with a Roman Catholic girl played by Sybel Coetzee, and ‘n Beeld vir Jeannie (1976), in which a sculptor (again Hans Strydom), uses an unmarried mother as a model for a statue to honour the women and children who died in the Boer War concentration camps.
Amongst his most popular films as director were the Boer War adventure story, Kavaliers (1966), the romantic drama Hoor My Lied (1967), starring the tenor Gé Korsten, and Snip en Rissiepit (1973), based on the popular Springbok Radio serial by Jan Scholtz. He is also credited with having “discovered” actors like Hans Strydom, Sybel Coetzee, Rika Sennett and Alice Krige – or at least with giving them their first movie roles. After working first for Jamie Uys and then for Tommie Meyer and Ben Vlok at Kavalier Films, in 1973 he established his own production company and Elmo de Witt Films became a major player in the South African film industry. From then on he also produced most of the films he directed. After a few years he retired from directing to concentrate on the production side, with his company providing the SABC with a range of television series.
Towards the end of his life he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and he died while on holiday at the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast. He was survived by his wife, Riana, a son, Elmo Jr and a daughter, Deanne. Cinematographer Louis de Witt (1938-1993) was his younger brother and shot most of his films as director. (FO)
