Bless Their Little Hearts (Bluesy Dreams)

Seven years after Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, Woodberry describes the moral and psychological damage that unemployment and marginalisation have wreaked on a couple in the Watts district. In a landscape of de-industrialisation prey to gang violence, Woodberry uses restrained tension and harrowing nuance to reveal the effects of a system that abandons the workforce to the consequences of its crises. Billy Woodberry presented this work as his UCLA thesis film. Born in Dallas, Billy Woodberry is a filmmaker and teacher. He has worked with Charles Burnett, Thom Andersen and James Benning, and his films include The Architect, the Ants and the Bees.