Films › Directing
Killer of Sheep
Directed by Charles Burnett, 1978
Burnett shot on weekends with a student crew, non-professional actors and real Watts locations, and the film is now in the National Film Registry. The structure is episodic and unresolved, closer to observed life than to plot. Children playing in rubble carry as much weight as the adult scenes. It is the strongest existing argument that limited resources are not a limit on authorship. Burnett shot on 16mm reversal stock and often served as his own cinematographer, composing static, patient frames that treat domestic interiors with the same visual seriousness as documentary subjects. The soundtrack draws on blues and gospel recordings licensed informally at the time, giving the film a musical texture that took decades to clear for wider release. Editing avoids conventional scene transitions almost entirely, letting fragments of daily life accumulate into meaning rather than argument, a method worth studying for anyone working without a traditional narrative budget.
What to watch for
Watch the children's play sequences and how they are cut against the slaughterhouse work.
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