After 30 years, Charles Burnett’s KILLER OF SHEEP – a 1977 independent film shot on 16mm and made for a rock bottom budget of $10,000 from film grants – is finally getting a theatrical release in selected markets (mostly repertory and art cinemas like the Landmark chain in major cities). A stark yet often lyrical portrait of life on the edge in an economically depressed neighborhood in south L.A., the film avoids a traditional narrative and draws you in through a series of vignettes in the lives of a working class family presided over by Stan, who works in a slaughterhouse for sheep, hence the film’s title. On the surface, Watts looks like a wasteland but Burnett finds poetry in odd places and creates moments of quiet beauty from the squalor – kids leaping across rooftops, Stan’s daughter singing to her doll while her mother primps in the bathroom mirror, a group of teenagers trying to physically move an abandoned railroad car, Stan and his wife slow dancing to Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth.” Even the dehumanizing day to day glimpses of Stan’s work in the slaughterhouse is tempered by Burnett’s ironic use of music and occasionally disorienting camera angles.

Many of the scenes in the movie are filmed at floor level as if indicative of the beaten-down, defeated nature of some of the Watts residents. In one scene Stan tries to repair the kitchen floor while being distracted by tensions between visiting neighbors and a son who enjoys bullying his sister. In another scene, we observe a crap game from the point of view of a woman’s leg. And in one of the sadder moments, we watch floor level negotiations for a used car engine end in a thoughtless accident that sums up the futility of Stan’s life.

The film may be uncompromising in its portrait of how grinding poverty crushes the soul and spirit yet there’s a vitality and creative energy on display here that is exhilarating. Burnett approaches his terrain like an ethnographer and we get an insider view of a culture most moviegoers have never seen before – slices of real life, moments of truth. And the kids in the film will break your heart such as Stan’s daughter, a mute and forlorn figure, wandering around in a dog mask or the impish kid dodging dirt clogs from behind a piece of plywood. Yet there’s never an attempt to sentimentalize or condescend to these ragtag kids, running around in packs unsupervised. When you see the film, you’ll understand why it has been compared to the Italian neorealism classics of Vittorio de Sica – “The Bicycle Thieves” – and Roberto Rossellini – “Open City“. Like those films, Burnett also used mostly non-professional actors and friends from his Watts neighborhood and it only adds to the film’s authenticity.

The main problem facing KILLER OF SHEEP is how to encourage people to take a chance on it since most moviegoers want simple escapism. They don’t expect art, poetry, and raw emotion from a movie but that’s what you’ll take away from this one-of-a-kind masterpiece. So if you’re a true cinephile you’d better rush to see it while you can because its commercial prospects in this day and time are slim. It only lasted a week in its Atlanta engagement and I suspect that’s an indication of how it will play around the country.

For more information, visit the KILLER OF SHEEP web site

http://www.killerofsheep.com/