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KILLER OF SHEEP

By Charles BURNETT

MILESTONE FILM & VIDEO - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 1977

- Year of production
- 1977
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Director(s)
- Charles BURNETT
- Synopsis
- One of the most famous and acclaimed films by an African-American filmmaker, KILLER OF SHEEP was one of the first 50 films to be selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry and was chosen by the National Society of Film Critics as one of the 100 Essential Films. In 1981 KILLER OF SHEEP screened at the International Forum of New Cinema in Berlin and won the FiIPRESCI Prize. But, due to music licensing problems, the film has rarely been screened, and then only in ragged 16mm prints. On its thirtieth anniversary, Milestone Films has cleared all the rights and will present the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s dazzling 35mm restoration of this landmark film.
  KILLER OF SHEEP depicts the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-Seventies through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is struggling to keep from becoming increasingly detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. Continually frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing to the radio with his wife, holding his daughter. The film offers no solution, it merely presents life; some of it hauntingly bleak, some of it filled with transcendent joy and humor. Burnett says of the film: "Stan's real problem lies within the family, trying to make that work and be a human being. You don't necessarily win battles; you survive."