Killer of Sheep

I saw Killer of Sheep tonight at Film Streams. It was a very interesting and also very inspiring film, a film that makes me want to go out and make a movie (which I have already been SERIOUSLY itching to do...it's time, I just got to get it together). The film was completed by Charles Burnett in 1977, and shot mostly in Watts, the South Central L.A. neighborhood he grew up in, during the 1970s. It was his M.F.A. thesis project for UCLA, shot on grainy, beautiful black and white 16 mm and operated, edited, produced, written and directed by himself. He made it for a reported budget of $10,000 and without the intention of having a commercial release, and thus had a ton of music in the film but not the rights. I'm just glad that it's out for people to see it, finally.

It's a striking film. It doesn't have much of a narrative plot, but rather captures a specific neighborhood during a specific time so well. The mood and tone is what drives the piece, and some of the images are stunning. The film has this great scene of the daughter, who is about five years old, singing the words to a soul song that she doesn't quite know to her doll. She tries to keep up with the song and emphasizes the words she does know, and seems totally unaware of the camera. It was SO good. I loved all the scenes with neighborhood kids just doing what they would do on a normal day in the neighborhood, whether it was playing by train tracks or in abandoned lots, having standing on their head contests, or leaping across roofs. Burnett captured that world so well...I'm sure just by going out and shooting was what actually going on.

Burnett had this to say about his experience in film school: "At UCLA in the Sixties, you thought about World Cinema - whether it was films from Poland, or Czechoslovakia, or Japan. It was like your backyard; you were as aware of Kurosawa, Truffaut making films as you were of some local person. You were waiting for the next film by these people. That doesn't exist any more, for a whole bunch of reasons. At that time at UCLA you looked at film as an art form, as a means of expression. Not so much for entertainment, it was to do and say something. Now, when you go back there, it's "How can I get into Hollywood? How do you get an agent? How do you sell your first script?" The whole culture has changed. It's a business now, and I think people are more aware of it as a business. I wasn't aware of it as a business."