"Killer of Sheep" - A Film By Charles Burnett In Theaters After 30 Years

I read an article over the weekend about a film that was made 30 years. The film is called "Killer of Sheep" by Charles Burnett.

See this interview of Charles Burnett by writer and filmmaker Nelson Kim at sensesofcinema.com.

Charles Burnett wrote, directed, produced, shot and edited this black-and-white film on a shoestring budget and submitted it for his UCLA graduate thesis in 1977. It stars Henry Gayle Sanders and Kaycee Moore and will be screened in various cities this Spring including a D.C. screening in June.

I also read that this film was chosen by the National Society of Film Critics as one of the 100 Essential Films of all time and has been named a national treasure and selected for preservation in the United States Library of Congress' National Film Registry. See below for more.

Official website: killerofsheep.com
D.C. Screening June 1st - 7th, 2007 at the E St. Cinema



Description of the film from the website:

Writer/Director Charles Burnett submitted his first feature, Killer of Sheep, as his thesis for his MFA in film at UCLA. The film was shot on location near his family's home in Watts in a series of weekends on a shoestring budget of less than $10,000, most of which was grant money.

With a mostly amateur cast (consisting of Burnett's friends and acquaintances), much handheld camera work, episodic narrative and gritty documentary-style cinematography, Killer of Sheep has been compared by film critics and scholars to Italian neorealist films like Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief and Roberto Rossellini's Paisan. However, Burnett cites Basil Wright's Songs of Ceylon and Night Mail and Jean Renoir's The Southerner as his main influences.

In 1981, Killer of Sheep received the Critic's Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 1990, the Library of Congress declared it a national treasure and placed it among the first 50 films entered in the National Film Registry for its historical significance. In 2002, the National Society of Film Critics selected the film as one of the 100 Essential Films of all time.

Despite these accolades, the film never saw popular distribution due to the expense and complication of the music rights (including songs by Etta James, Dinah Washington, Gershwin, Rachmaninov, Paul Robeson and Earth, Wind & Fire on the soundtrack) and in its rare viewings at festivals and museums it was shown on ragged 16mm prints. Now, thirty years later, the new 35mm print, restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, is ready for its long-awaited theatrical release.