“A great—the greatest—cinematic tone poem of American urban life” (David Edelstein, New York Magazine), Burnett’s Killer of Sheep evokes the everyday trials, fragile pleasures, and tenacious humor of blue-collar African Americans in 1970s Watts. Burnett made the film on a minuscule budget, with a mostly nonprofessional cast, combining keen on-the-street observation with a carefully crafted script. The episodic plot centers on the character of Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a slaughterhouse worker mired in exhaustion and disconnected from his wife, his children, and himself. Stan and his neighbors struggle just to get by, let alone get ahead; as befits a Los Angeles movie, vehicular metaphors of breakdown abound. Only the kids, leaping from roof to roof, seem to achieve a mobility that eludes their elders. “More than anything, Burnett grasps the task of the director as one of inventing surprising, eloquent, forceful gestures—which is why the slow-dance scene between the bare-chested but strangely alienated Stan and his wife, trembling with amorous emotion, is the single most-recalled moment from Killer of Sheep, or indeed Burnett’s entire, prodigious, multi-faceted career to date” (Adrian Martin).

Black Life Film Program Sponsor: Julie Simpson