Charles Burnett (To Sleep With Anger)'s first two independentfeatures were Killer of Sheep (1977) and My Brother's Wedding. Bothpresent knowing portraits of Watts families, and in both, Burnett'simmersion in the ironies and complexities of his subject matter defiesthe restrictions of incredibly small budgets. My Brother's Weddingfocuses on Pierce Monday (Everett Silas), whose love-hate relationshipwith the black community, while given an entirely personal portrayal,seems to encompass the burdens of a generation. Angry over hislower-middle-class status, angrier still at those who would have himseek affluence, he finds himself suddenly alone at the age of thirty,all of his friends having been imprisoned or killed, and his brotherbound for an upper-middle-class life with his bride-to-be. Varietynoted, "Burnett...has a facility for incorporating secondarycharacters, comic observation and local color into the story and stillmaintaining the central focus."