ICE-Vision: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
Thursday, March 31 at 8 PM
Lamar Dodd School of Art Room S150
Film Studies major Will Stephenson continues ICE’s informal weekly series, selecting a variety of world cinema classics and subcultural curiosities.
“For three long decades, Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep,” a fictional portrait of a working-class black family living in a broken-down home in a bombed-out stretch of Los Angeles, has been largely hidden from view. Shot in Watts in the early ’70s and completed in 1977, the film was Mr. Burnett’s M.F.A. thesis project and never meant for a commercial release. He operated the 16-millimeter camera himself, edited the black-and-white images into a visual poem and added the ballads, the jazz and the moody blues that seep into your head like smoke. The result is an American masterpiece, independent to the bone.” -The New York Times