About

One of the seminal masterpieces of American cinema, Charles Burnett's debut feature Killer of Sheep is a portrait of the filmmaker's adopted home of Watts, a predominantly Black neighbourhood in southern Los Angeles. Told with lyrical beauty and neorealist naturalism, the film drifts between disaffected slaughterhouse worker Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) and a group of lively children, presented within a larger tapestry of the working-class community.

Written, directed, shot and edited by Burnett, Killer of Sheep was originally made as his thesis project at UCLA. Burnett filmed over weekends throughout 1972 and 1973 with his cast of local, non-professional actors. Never expecting it to screen publicly, Burnett crafted a bustling soundtrack of sublime blues and jazz for which he did not seek the necessary clearances. As a result, the film screened only rarely and largely unofficially for decades. In 2007, Burnett's longtime collaborators Milestone Films — along with supporter Steven Soderbergh — paid more than $150,000 to license the music and transfer the film from its 16mm elements to 35mm prints so that it could finally screen in cinemas around the world. Now, nearly twenty years later, the film has been newly restored into 4K, offering a fresh opportunity to appreciate the textured poetry of its monochrome images.

Despite its staggered release history, Burnett's film has become celebrated as a major entry in the American film canon; it has been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress and was voted among the 50 greatest films ever made in the BFI's influential Sight & Sound poll in 2022. It remains the director's best known and most acclaimed work, powerfully blending documentary realism with masterful cinematographic precision, a scorching sense of political injustice with deep reserves of empathy.