Killer of Sheep

In the Watts ghetto, the melancholy Stan, a slaughterhouse worker, defends his dignity. A chronicle depicting the days of a family haunted by the memory of their native South, and a delicately poetic and tenderly ironic ballad of a community, the children’s universe, the scheming of petty or big-time thugs, and the women’s strength and guile. The film music, “an aural history of African-American popular music” (C.B.), backs and comments on the search for the truth of these lives and people’s inner truth. Filmed over several weekends on a budget of a few thousand dollars, the film (Burnett’s thesis film for UCLA) was not released in the United States until 2007.