Killer of Sheep
New 35mm print
The man gazes across the room with sad eyes deadened by his daily toil in a slaughterhouse. His wife wonders what's wrong. But the pain cannot be verbalized. It can only be captured by the camera in stark, black-and-white imagery.
The scene comes from the drama Killer of Sheep, long considered a sort of cinephile's Holy Grail, widely coveted but hard to find. Shot 30 years ago on a shoestring budget by a UCLA film student named Charles Burnett, the nonlinear portrait of a working-class black family struggling to get by in the Watts section of Los Angeles has accumulated a number of honors over the years. The Library of Congress enshrined it in the National Film Registry. The National Society of Film Critics counted Sheep as one of the 100 essential films of all time.
Killer of Sheep was Mr. Burnett's thesis film at UCLA film school, which he attended after studying electronics at Los Angeles City College. The film wasn't designed to recall the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of the Italian neorealists. But it does. Watts is Mr. Burnett's Rome, an urban environment that becomes as much a character as any of the people in the film. (C. Vognar, Dallas Morning News)
Killer of Sheep
Wed September 19, 2007, 7:00 & 9:00, Muenzinger Auditorium
USA, 1977, English, B&W, 83 min , Unrated, 35mm (1.33:1) • official site
Tickets
10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission.
$7 w/UCB student ID,
$7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.
Parking
Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the
Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters
along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.
RTD Bus
Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus
International Film Series
(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.
First Person Cinema
(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.
C.U. Film Program
(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil
Grillo.
Celebrating Stan
Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.
C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts
Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.