Charles Burnett

 Charles Burnett 

Charles Burnett
1) is an important filmmaker who was part of the L.A. Rebellion,
2) a group of black filmmakers that attended and worked at UCLA from the late 1960s to the late 1980s.
3)\The Hollywood films of Spike Lee, John Singleton, and the Hughes Brothers overshadowed
     Burnett’s work in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mast and Kawin suggest this might have been
 4)because Burnett’s films do not focus on the problems of crime and violence.
5)Instead, he makes films about black families dealing with a variety of problems.

His film first Killer of Sheep (1977)
1) is reminiscent of the style of John Cassavetes in many ways (improvisational)
2) and examines the problems of a man who works at a slaughterhouse.
3)The film also has ties to neorealism (i.e. non-professional actors, on location shooting etc.).

From the Killer of Sheep DVD press release:

1) Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s
    through the eyes of Stan,
2) a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll
    of working at a slaughterhouse.
3)Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty:
   a)the warmth of a teacup against his cheek,
   b)slow dancing with his wife,
   c)holding his daughter.
4)The film offers no solutions;
5)it merely presents life—sometimes hauntingly bleak,
6)sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.
7)The film was shot in roughly a year of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000,
   paid for partially by a Louis B. Mayer grant of $3,000,
   and also out of the pocket of Burnett himself,
   who at the time was working at a small, boutique casting agency…
8)Shot on location with a mostly amateur cast, much handheld camerawork,
    and an episodic narrative with gritty documentary- style cinematography,

Killer of Sheep has been compared by film critics and scholars to Italian neorealist films like Vittorio DeSica’s Bicycle Thieves and Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan.

Film preview: 

In the following clip, we see how Burnett's unique visual style reinforces the plight of the film's characters and their economic and social condition.

Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977):

A very small part of the clip we saw Click Here

small article on film Click Here