Killer of Sheep

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Killer of Sheep
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1990.

Killer of Sheep is a 1978 American drama film edited, shot, written, produced, and directed by Charles Burnett. Shot primarily in 1972 and 1973, it was originally submitted by Burnett to the UCLA School of Film in 1977 as his Master of Fine Arts thesis. It features Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, and Charles Bracy, among others, in acting roles.

Why It Rocks

1. It's simultaneously naturalistic, poetic, witty, and heartbreaking.
2. The lead character Stan is very easy to follow and relatable too with his constant struggle to retain dignity in the face of grinding deprivation and disquieting temptations, and the alienation that threatens to break him away from his family just adds to all of his pain.
3. Unlike most filmmakers that used commercial styles and techniques to speak to a broad audience, Charles Burnett took a different approach to the marketplace, one that valued vision over compromise, and sacrificed quick profits for artistic integrity.
4. Burrent's style focuses in tightly on individuals, allowing the characters to emerge through long, digressive conversations. Music acts as both commentary on and counterpoint to their lives. Killer of Sheep draws on similar characters and situations from his earlier short film Several Friends.
5. While most of the cast is unprofessional, due to the director filming in and around his neighborhood, the acting still manages to come across as natural, including Henry Gayle Sanders and Angela Burnett.
6. It provides a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of the African American community assaulted by poverty and lack of opportunity, yet it manages to remain partially hopeful. Focusing on everyday life in Black communities rarely featured in American cinema, the film combines lyrical storytelling with a starkly neorealist, documentary-style approach
   • With a particular sympathy for the children, Killer of Sheep is a plot-free, yet carefully drafted dramatic black and white film. It reflects the routine lives of a family combined with random and often absurd events. Blending the harsh reality of the ghetto in Black Los Angeles Watts in the mid-1970s with observant surrealism, the film unfolds as a series of interludes involving the family’s children, the parents, friends and strangers who pass through their lives. The director claimed the film was "basically a reaction about how some films are made about the working class and the working poor and how the problems were always so simple and clear-cut and easily solved. He came from an environment where there was no one solution.”
7. Incredible camerawork and cinematography.
8. Powerful and meaningful soundtrack.
9. The film may be non-narrative, without the usual acts, plot arcs or character development, but the subplots and overall message of the stories is pretty clear, and the story routes are incredibly unpredictable.
   • The most consistent plotline is the chronicle of a slaughterhouse employee's daily struggles and the emotional baggage he carries home.
   • In one of the film's most powerful scenes, Angela, wearing a grotesque rubber dog mask, stands silently while her father works on a house project with a friend. A silent observer in the room, the men seem to not notice her until her Stan Jr. comes in and, in a forceful way, demands that she take it off. Surreal moments like this serve to underscore the absurdities of everyday life and the concurrent resilience of humanity in the face of the dehumanizing forces acting on poor communities.

Trivia

• Killer of Sheep, Meshes of the Afternoon and A Woman Under the Influence are the first independently produced films to be inducted into the National Film Registry.
• Killer of Sheep is the first student film to be inducted into the National Film Registry.

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