New Restoration

“Charles’s contribution to cinema—to a very particular cinema—has for too long gone understated. A monumental work.”

Barry Jenkins

For decades, Charles Burnett’s astonishing debut feature was an invisible masterpiece of American cinema. Premiering at the Whitney in 1978 but shelved shortly after due to music-licensing impediments—it includes songs by Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, and Earth, Wind & Fire—the film was rescued from obscurity in 2007, in part thanks to financial help from Steven Soderbergh. The director’s MFA thesis for UCLA, Killer of Sheep relates, with palpable tenderness and neorealist form, the struggles of a Black slaughterhouse worker raising a family in Watts, LA. Burnett belies the untold limitations of the project (not least a paltry student budget) with photojournalistic discernment, bold, elliptical treatment of story, and an ability to locate poetry within the hardships of inner-city life. Upon wide release, the picture met with a chorus of praise and recognition as a canon-disrupting work of greatness. It now ranks among the top 50 films of all time in Sight and Sound​’s decennial poll.

“A beautiful examination of everyday life … So gorgeous and human.”

Lynne Ramsay

“An American masterpiece, independent to the bone … This may be Burnett’s most radical truth-telling.”

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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