This first feature film by Billy Woodberry is central to a new current of black American independent filmmaking: like the films of fellow UCLA Film School graduate Charles Burnett (see April 9), who also wrote and photographed Bless Their Little Hearts, Woodberry's work is rooted in a black American sensibility, but informed by his familiarity with international cinema, from Italian Neorealism to the work of contemporary filmmakers in Cuba, Brazil, India and Africa. Bless Their Little Hearts, set in Watts, California, confronts a black family at a moment of crisis, when the relationship between a husband and wife, parents of three young children, is about to succumb to the strains of the husband's longterm unemployment. Paramount in Woodberry's approach is the delineation of character, and an exploration of the myriad expectations, myths and fantasies that go into the making of it. Andais (Kaycee Moore) confronts with slow despair the realization that she is in fact the head of her household, while Charlie, her husband (Nate Hardman), desperately seeks affirmation elsewhere of his long-held assumptions of what makes a man a man. (Featured at international film festivals in France and at the Berlin Film Festival, 1984.)