Killer Of Sheep
Groundbreaking film about everyday life in Watts, Los Angeles. Charles Burnett portrays the Black working class without embellishment and gave independent cinema a new face.
Director Charles Burnett created a cinema vérité-style portrait of Stan, a slaughterhouse worker and resident of the Watts neighbourhood. Stan (Henry Gale Sanders) comes home utterly exhausted from work but still tries to keep his spirits up, as does his wife (Kaycee Moore). The camera follows the cast – made up largely of Burnett’s friends and acquaintances – through loosely connected episodes that together form a ’slice of life’: friends drop by, children play, and neighbours stop for a chat.
Burnett submitted the 16mm film as his graduation project at UCLA’s film school, featuring a soundtrack with songs by major artists such as Etta James, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Dinah Washington, as well as works by Gershwin and Rachmaninoff. Due to the high music licensing costs, the film could not be distributed, but screenings in the alternative circuit established Burnett’s reputation.
Eventually, ‘the most influential film you’ve never seen’ was restored and re-released in 2007, with the music rights cleared. The film has now been restored once again, this time in 4K.