Meryl Streep
Karen Christence Dinesen Blixen-Finecke
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A list of awards and nominations for the film Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress.
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
- Academy Award nominations (* denotes win)
Out of Africa, American-British film, released in 1985, that was based on events in the life of Karen Blixen-Finecke, who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen. It starred Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and was known for its beautiful cinematography. The movie won seven Academy Awards, including that for best picture.
The events of the movie take place between 1913 and 1931. It begins in Denmark, where Karen (played by Streep) proposes a marriage of convenience to her friend (and cousin) Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Planning to run a dairy farm in Africa, they travel to British East Africa and subsequently marry. The couple later goes to the farm, which is near Nairobi, and Bror informs her that he has decided to operate a coffee farm. More interested in hunting, he largely leaves Karen to manage the venture on her own. As she explores the area, she comes face-to-face with a lioness, but the big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Redford) and his friend Berkeley (Michael Kitchen) arrive in time to save her. Later, on the farm, she attends to the medical needs of the Kikuyu people who live in the area.
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World War I breaks out, and Bror is sent to the front. When an army messenger tells Karen that she is to send supplies to the front, she decides to bring the items herself. She encounters Denys and Berkeley on her journey, and Denys gives her a compass. She braves many hazards but succeeds in getting the supply train to the front, where she reunites with Bror. Upon her return to the farm, however, Karen discovers that she has contracted syphilis from the philandering Bror. After receiving treatment in Denmark, Karen returns to the farm and ends her relationship with Bror. During this time she also builds a school for the Kikuyu. One day Denys takes her on a safari, during which they begin a romance, and he eventually moves into Karen’s home. All is not idyllic, however, as Berkeley dies from a form of malaria, and Karen struggles to keep the coffee farm financially afloat. Denys’s inability to fully commit to Karen leads her to break off the relationship. Shortly thereafter, her barn burns down, and Karen decides to return to Denmark. She sells off her possessions and begs the colonial authority to allow the Kikuyu workers to continue to live on the farm. She and Denys have a final dinner together, but Denys later crashes his biplane and is killed. Before leaving for home, Karen gives Denys’s compass to her foreman, Farah (Malick Bowens).
Most of Out of Africa was shot on location in Kenya, near the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. Orson Welles, David Lean, and Nicolas Roeg considered turning Dinesen’s book Out of Africa (1937) into a film before director Sydney Pollack succeeded, using a screenplay by Karl Luedtke that drew on more recent biographies of both Dinesen and Finch Hatton as well as on Dinesen’s writings.
•Studios: Mirage Enterprises and Universal Pictures
•Director: Sydney Pollack
•Writer: Karl Luedtke (screenplay)
•Music: John Barry
•Meryl Streep (Karen Blixen)
•Klaus Maria Brandauer (Bror Blixen)
•Robert Redford (Denys Finch Hatton)
•Michael Kitchen (Berkeley)
•Picture*
•Lead actress (Meryl Streep)
•Supporting actor (Klaus Maria Brandauer)
•Art direction*
•Cinematography*
•Costume design
- Pat Bauer
It was also a commercial success and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Pollack. Plot. Karen Blixen recalls her life in Africa, where she moved in 1913 as an unmarried, wealthy Dane.
- Karen Blixen
- 1937
Mar 30, 2012 · Out of Africa producer Sydney Pollack wins the Oscar for Best Picture at the 58th Annual Academy Awards. Introduced by Robin Williams, Alan Alda, and Jane Fonda and presented by John...
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Out of Africa, a romantic drama set in colonial Kenya, swept the 58th Academy Awards with seven awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress. See the full list of winners and nominees, highlights, and memorable moments from the ceremony.
Dec 20, 1985 · Out of Africa: Directed by Sydney Pollack. With Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Michael Kitchen. In 20th-century colonial Kenya, a Danish baroness/plantation owner has a passionate love affair with a free-spirited big-game hunter.
Mar 25, 1986 · ''Out of Africa,'' a stately epic about the Danish novelist Isak Dinesen's years on a coffee plantation in Kenya, swept its way to seven Oscars tonight at the 58th annual Academy Awards...
