The Marquee Film Festival: Killer of Sheep (1977)

USA | 83 min | NR | 35mm | Dir. Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett's legendary first feature, and UCLA masters thesis, is framed around an African American family living in Watts. Its patriarch, Stan, works at a slaughterhouse and finds himself increasingly isolated from friends and family. Told in a series of loose vignettes, Burnett's look at life in the ghetto is today see as a key piece of American independent film-making. See master filmmaker Charles Burnett's vision on 35mm, courtesy of Milestone Films! "What [Burnett] captures above all in "Killer of Sheep" is the deadening ennui of hot, empty summer days, the dusty passage of time when windows and screen doors stood open, and the way the breathless day crawls past.