Killer of Sheep

With an existential and realistic aura, Killer of Sheep records the life of an african-american community in Watts, Los Angeles. It is centred in Stan’s circle, as a slaughterhouse worker suffering the emotional toll of his alienating job. The film dodges traditional narrative structures, choosing to show urban life through different vignettes: observing kids’ entertainment in the streets, criminal temptation, and the slow dancing between Stan and his wife, amongst other quotidian moments. The african-american music prevails across scenes, creating a poetic and emotionally involving atmosphere.

This movie was Burnett’s master project, and counts on his friends and colleagues to complete its cast. Despite its very limited budget and the initial difficulties in securing the soundtrack rights for a broad distribution of the film, it established an internationally respected reputation for the director. Praised by critics for its sensitivity, Burnett’s creation shows an african-american community realistically - free from Hollywood's stereotypes and visual conventions, in an austerely honest portrait.

Duration: 80
Production year: 1978
Country: United States of America
Subtitles: EN, Subtitles: PT

Berlin Film Festival 1978 - FIPRESCI Prize
Locarno International Festival 1997 - Official Selection in Competition
Berlin Festival 2007 - Critics Prize

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Charles Burnett

The North-American director, producer, and writer was born in 1944, in Mississippi. His sensitivity to the African-american condition has been linked to his experience living in Los Angeles, Watts, where he was raised since 1947. Watts would be a stage of vast state injustice, with a population racial segregated and under heavy police persecution, deprived from equalitarian education and job opportunities.

After studying writing and languages, Burnett completed a master in Theatre and Film at UCLA’s Film School. He would become one of the producers associated with the movement L.A. Rebellion, also known as ‘Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers’: a generation of filmmakers from the 60s to the 80s of UCLA, creators of a revolutionary Black Cinema diverging from Hollywood conventional representations and stereotypical scripts, and attentive to the real african-american lived experiences and culture.

Burnett’s first feature film Killer of Sheep was submitted as his final master project in 1977. Although the film premiered at the Whitney Museum in 1978 and integrated the National Film Registry by the north-american Library of Congress in 1990, it was publicly inaccessible until 2007. The movie described as "merely presenting life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humour” was then acclaimed internationally. Applauded by critics as one of the best independent productions, Killer of Sheep was awarded the Critic’s Award at the Berlin International Film Festival and praised at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance Festival and New York Film Critics Circle.

The humanitarian and attentive character of this filmmaker shines through the tragicomedy My Brother’s Wedding (1983, reedited in 2007); and the cultural and historical importance of To Sleep With Anger (1990) has been pointed out by the Library of Congress. Burnett has received reputable grants by the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and J.P. Getty Foundation. He would carry on focusing on corruption and racism within the police (The Glass Shield, 1994), liberation movements (Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, 2007) and expand his practice in television with NightJohn (1996), Selma, Lord, Selma (1999) and Warming By the Devil’s Fire (an episode in Scorsese’s series The Blues, 2003), amongst other projects.

Many of his UCLA’s colleagues would remain life-long friends and collaborators: Burnett was the cinematographer in Bush Mama (Haile germ,1979), filmed and edited Illusions (Julie Dash, 1982) and was the screenwriter and cinematographer of Bless Their Little Hearts (Billy Woodberry, 1984).