101 Great Films- # 85 Killer of Sheep

1977  Killer of Sheep

Directed by Charles Burnett

"In cinema, we're [black people] the only ones whose language is considered realistic when it's demeaning." 
                          Charles Burnett

Original source, “The 50 Most Influential Black Films”  by S. Torriano Berry with Venise T. Berry

 my source Internet Movie database

Charles Burnett

      When folks talk about Black American Cinema, they usually talk 

of Spike Lee, Oscar Micheaux or the blaxploitation of the early to mid 70s, 

                                        but

One person few talk about, just  maybe the best of the group, 

Charles Burnett.

           Burnett was born in Vicksburg Mississippi but grew up in Watts. He got a  degree in writing and language, then got a masters from UCLA film school. After finishing school he took his master’s thesis and turned it into “Killer of Sheep”                                             

Shot in black and white, with mainly a hand held camera,

and a  ridiculously small budget, what he lacked in  money he made up in craftsmen-ship,

 

“Killer of Sheep” is still one of only a handful of films that contain black characters that aren’t stereotypes, they’re not metaphors for something or someone else; not just passive victims of racism, class struggle or the crush of American life. They are 100% human beings, with flaws, not good or bad just folk. 

 It is a quiet film that is exploding with life, 

real life, not the filmy industry life, of gunn tattin, wise crackin drug sellin or buying black folk.

Burnett’s  genius is by making a film about everyday working class life, and he does it in a lovely and his own sweet time style.

He has created a subversive piece of cinema that at its core should make you think about everything we have seen about being a African- American in the media.

  

As usual with America art, it took an outsider to call it great before we took notice, that happened in 1981, when  Burnett's film won a price at the  Berlin International Film Festival.   

The Library of Congress declared it a national treasure as one of the first fifty on the National Film Registry.

The National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the "100 Essential Films" of all time.

Original release on cheap stock 16mm, in 2007 his alma mater  restored and printed “Killer of Sheep” on 35mm, and it is ready available for viewings

 

So if you have a local indie movie house, give them a call and see if they wont bring

Killer of Sheep  your be glad you made the call! 

Killer of sheep video exhibit

101 Great Films:

101 One False Move

100 Friends of Eddie Coyle

99 Tampopo

98 The Thing

97 Nanook of the North

96 The Battle of Algiers

95  The Third Man

94 Au Revoir Les Enfants

93 Meshes of the Afternoon

92 Alien

91 Young Frankenstein

90  Bull Durham

89 Los Olvidados

88 Two-Lane Blacktop

87 Ace in the hole

86   Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1926

85 Killer of sheep, 1977, Charles Burnett,