Killer of Sheep (1977)
Director: Charles Burnett
Starring: Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy
Text: Matt Bochenski
Not exactly your average popcorn flick, Charles Burnett’s 1977 neorealist-inspired tale of a black slaughterhouse worker drifting through his own ‘private hell’ represents the birth of socially conscious black filmmaking in America.
Shot entirely on location in LA, at weekends, featuring a cast of friends and family, Burnett’s film is an oblique portrait, perhaps more a tone poem, of a time and place in the hinterlands of America’s struggle for civil rights.
Watch the trailer:
