Charles Burnett
-
“People Can Choose to Create the Collective, Social Experience”: Billy Woodberry on Bless Their Little Hearts
Billy Woodberry was a graduate student in UCLA’s film program when he started work on Bless Their Little Hearts (1984), a gauzy black-and-white portrait of a married couple in Watts as their responsibilities to one another are tested by the burdens of underemployment. Day-to-day gigging against a background of vanishing local industry, Charlie Banks (Nate Hardman) embarks on an affair, while his exhausted wife Andais (Kaycee Hardman) works double-time, commuting to her own job while also looking after their home and children. Chafing against the confines of roles that no longer seem to fit, their affections are suffocated by limits […]
by Steve Macfarlane and Madeline Coleman on May 25, 2017 -
CHARLES BURNETT, “KILLER OF SHEEP”
Originally published in the Spring 2007 issue of Filmmaker. Killer of Sheep plays this week as part of the Milestone Films 20th Anniversary series at the IFC Center. “When I stumbled across a 16mm print of Killer of Sheep at film school in North Carolina, it was like finding gold. I had never seen an American film quite like it…raw, honest simplicity that left me sitting there in an excited silence. It echoed throughout George Washington, the first film that David Gordon Green and I made together.” — Tim Orr, cinematographer (All the Real Girls, Raising Victor Vargas) What sort […]
by James Ponsoldt on Nov 24, 2010 -
BRANDON HARRIS’S SEMINAL INDIES
Yesterday on the blog we asked what films inspired young viewers (in their 20s or below) to identify with the independent film movement. Here are responses from filmmaker, critic and Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris. Short Cuts (1993) – Saw it on cable TV sometime in 1994. I was too young to understand its significance at the time, but I believe it was the first American Independent film I ever saw. The fact that I watched it all at that age probably explains alot about me. Clerks (1994) & Chasing Amy (1997) – Saw both of these during winter break, […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 7, 2010 -
Revisiting The Topic Of Indie Movies And Youth
This is perhaps the longest gestating blog post in Filmmaker Blog history. Back in December, Ted Hope commented on the graying of the arthouse audience in a post entitled “Can Truly Free Film Appeal to Younger Audiences?” He asked: What is it that new audiences want? What must the indie community do to engage them? It is really surprising how few true indie films speak to a youth audience. In this country we’ve had Kevin Smith and Napoleon Dynamite, but nothing that was youth and also truly on the art spectrum like Run Lola Run or the French New Wave (Paranormal […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2010 -
OUT OF AFRICA
Ever since he made the independent classic Killer of Sheep Charles Burnett has had more than his share of tough times finding financing for his films. But this news story in Variety may detail his strangest career moment yet: the crew shut-down of his latest feature, Where Others Wavered due to lack of payment by the government of Namibia, where the film is shooting. From the article: “Principal photography started April 25 in the capital of Windhoek on the movie about former freedom fighter Sam Nujoma ( played by “Alias” thesp Carl Lumbly), who helped Namibia gain independence from South […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 12, 2005
