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Where was Out of Africa filmed? A guide to the epic scenery of the Oscar-winning movie



Want to know where Out of Africa from 1985 was filmed? The movie starring Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer was shot at more than 3 locations, including Shaba National Reserve in Kenya. All the filming locations of Out of Africa are listed below.


Meryl Streep and Robert Redford star in the sweeping romantic drama, "Out of Africa," filmed on location in East Africa. This 1985 American epic romantic drama film, directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, plus 6 additional awards - including Best Cinematography for capturing the breathtaking beauty and expanse of the Kenyan wilderness.




where was out of africa filmed



"Out of Africa" was filmed on location in Africa using descendants of several people of the Kikuyu tribe who are named in the book, including the grandson of chief Kinyanjui who played his own grandfather. Much of it was filmed in the Langata area near the actual Ngong Hills outside Nairobi.


The production was not without its share of problems. The country was in the middle of drought during filming, and the crew had to consider moving to a different location; the rains came just as they were attempting to decide where to relocate. Many crew members contracted malaria, and filming animals in the bush posed its own special problems. It is illegal to touch or maneuver wild animals, so the crew had to camp out for hours while they waited for the animals to come into just the right spot for each shot.


Early in the film, Baroness Karen Blixen is introduced to her servants. Although the scene is inter-cut with close-ups and other inserts in the film, the first take was filmed as one long shot that required Meryl Streep to meet and exchange dialogue with several other characters. As soon as director Sydney Pollack yelled "Cut", Streep, wearing a high-collared shirt and snug jacket, yelled "get this thing off of me!" and ripped open her jacket. A large beetle had crawled down the front of the jacket moments after the camera rolled, yet she continued filming the scene. Much of it remains in the final film.


Actual descendants of the Kikuyu tribe who were described in the book appeared in the film. The man who played chief Kinyanjui was his grandson. Much of it was filmed near the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, Kenya.


Production designer Stephen B. Grimes spent a months building a replica of 1913 Nairobi. The film's exterior sets were built not far from where Karen Blixen had once lived, in the area known as Karengata (an amalgam name for the township of Karen and the neighboring Langata area). Blixen's home was not available for shooting as at that time it was part of a nursing school. The interiors were shot in a nearly home belonging to the Scott family.


Lake Natron, where Delamere's party was on patrol, is extremely alkaline and unsuited for animals and birds that are not acclimatized to it. Its salts are similar to those used in ancient Egyptian mummification, and the assorted birds and bats that die there become calcified and preserved in an almost lifelike state. The lake is located 65 miles southwest of Karen Blixen's home.


When the lions attack the oxen, the oxen are enclosed within a kraal made of acacia ("thorn tree") branches. Some small villages in areas where lions and hyenas live are similarly enclosed. The more established villages start out this way, with the acacia branches being gradually replaced by a ring of dagger bushes, which are similar to agave in appearance but tougher and with thorny serrated leaves. In many villages, the rondavels (thatch-roofed, mud, and wattle homes) include a small fenced area inside to keep the goats out of the reach of predators. Acacia thorns are the chief food of giraffes.


The place where Denys would land his plane is never mentioned in the movie. It was in an undeveloped patch of land to the east of the farmhouse which is now called Ndege Road. Being named after Finchatton's plane, ndege is the Swahili word for bird or airplane.


Maryam d'Abo, who later landed the main James Bond girl role in The Living Daylights (1987), has an uncredited role in the film (at around 2 mins) where she's at an snowy outdoor hunting event and says the line, "It's too cold for champagne" as she pours the champagne for Klaus Maria Brandauer and passes Meryl Streep without offering her champagne.


Karen did not find out about Denys from Bror but from when she was in Nairobi and discovered that everyone was avoiding her. She finally had to stop someone and ask what was going on. This took place during the early days of the "Happy Valley" crowd, where the hedonistic behavior of a number of the aristocrats was a source of scandal among the more upstanding of the colonists. The undignified lifestyle of Bror, along with the relationship between Karen and Denys were considered scandalous, hence the behavior of the people in avoiding Karen when the news of Finch Hatton reached Nairobi.


As Karen gives instructions to Farah about the land for the Kikuyu, she mentions that she would not be there to speak for them in case they should fight over the land. In actual fact, the Kikuyu on her farm would have private hearings among the elders in case of internal strife, sometimes taking days to thrash out every detail and possible permutation. Karen would be asked to contribute to these sessions. An example of this was when one of the children was playing with a gun and accidentally killed another child. Karen's input was valuable as the Kikuyu did not differentiate between accidental and intentional crimes. In that specific case, the family of the shooter (who had run away and stayed with the Maasai for five years) should give the victim's family a specific number of goats. Were it not for Karen, the shooter might have been turned over to the authorities and hung. It should be noted that it was at one of the famous millstone tables on her back patio where she would sit when serving in her capacity of arbiter of issues between the Kikuyu.


At Finch Hatton's funeral, Karen Blixen reads from A.E. Housman's poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young". Karen reads this over Denys's grave: "The time you won your town the race, we chaired you through the marketplace; man and boy stood cheering by, as home we brought you shoulder-high. Smart lad, to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay. Early though the laurel grows, it withers quicker than a rose. Now you will not swell the rout of lads that wore their honors out. Runners whom renown outran, and the name died 'fore the man. And round that early-laureled head will flock to gaze the strengthless dead and find unwithered on its curls a garland briefer than a girl's." She goes on: "Now take back the soul of Denys George Finch Hatton whom you have shared with us. He brought us joy, and we loved him well. He was not ours. He was not mine." Her toast in the men's bar borrows from Housman's, "With Rue My Heart is Laden". She toasts: "Rose-lipped maidens, light-foot lads".


During his trips, she thinks up exotic and creative tales to amuse him in the evenings. Karen learns that Bror has infected her with syphilis. Then she travels to Denmark for therapy and recovery since she cannot get appropriate care in Nairobi. While she is gone, Bror continues his safari job when she returns, now unable to have children, and they begin to live apart. Karen Dinesen, a Norwegian woman who went to Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, was forced to leave her husband after being killed by an armed group of rebels. She returned to the where she wrote a book about her experiences and became a published novelist.


We sat down with The Woman King cinematographer Polly Morgan to get the scoop on having South Africa stand in for West Africa, where to find the beaches and castles featured in the film, and how she spent her time off in Cape Town.


In the film, the thing that triggers the sale of the farm is a fire that destroys the coffee factory. The coffee factory did burn down once, but much earlier, and was rebuilt. The scene where Kamante wakes her to tell her about the fire actually happened, but he was telling her about a brush fire, not a fire on her property. Instead, what forced her to sell was impersonal economic factors that would have been hard to address on-screen, so the fire is a reasonable invention to dramatize the crisis.


The Yellowstone prequel spinoff series 1923 features epic locations which rival that of the original show, and to achieve this, the crew filmed in three different continents. Indeed, just like in Yellowstone, the locations are just as important as the characters in 1923, whose daily lives and struggles are tied to the land on which they stand. After all, living and working on the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch is not just about basking in the inherent freedom of being a cowboy in the ranching industry. It's also about being worthy stewards of Montana's pristine mountain wilderness.


1923's filming locations also include South Africa and Tanzania. These locations were primarily used for scenes involving Spencer Dutton's time as a hunter and guide for safaris in Namibia. Notably, the beauty of Africa's unspoiled wilderness rivals that of Montana, which is a key message in scenes involving Spencer trying to escape his past. As Spencer says when asked about where he's from while in Namibia, Montana is "the mountain version of this place." Taking its cue from Yellowstone, 1923's filming locations almost serve as living characters in the show, expressing through sheer majesty what the dialog and actors cannot. To Spencer, Namibia's grassy and dangerous plains are all too familiar.


Curiously, IMDB lists Malta and Europe as separate 1923 filming locations, even though Malta is in Europe. Moreover, while it's unclear which scenes were filmed in these places, Malta and other parts of Europe will likely serve as the setting for more reveals regarding 1923 villain Donald Whitfield, or even Elizabeth Strafford, who is intent on marrying a Dutton she meets abroad. In any case, in unveiling the history of the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, 1923 is expanding the Sheridan-verse out of Montana, revealing not just how the Duttons were shaped across three different continents, but also their impact on the world. 2ff7e9595c


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