BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM talks to Charles Burnett about Killer of Sheep, the social climate in which it was made, and the changes that have taken place in American society since the release of his classic film.


Charles Burnett has been called a one-man New Wave. His film Killer of Sheep was officially declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress. Influential film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum once said, “I think a strong case can be made that Charles Burnett is the most gifted and important black filmmaker this country has ever had.” He was also the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur fellowship (also known as the “genius grant”) where US residents are given money for outstanding work (joining figures like Derek Walcott, William Gaddis, Robert Hass, Ornette Coleman, Errol Morris, John Sayles – in essence, the crème of the crème). His films have a legendary status among film historians and critics, yet his films have barely seen the light of day with wider audiences. However, Killer of Sheep, his landmark 1977 film has screenings at the Telecom New Zealand International Film Festivals, and we are indeed fortunate to have Burnett along as a guest of the fest.

Burnett was born in 1944 in Mississippi, and moved to Los Angeles as a child. He initially trained to work in electronics, but decided to enrol into the film programme in UCLA. “I got bored with electronics and didn’t think I’d be interested in it. I tended to go to movies a lot. I just wanted to start telling stories when I was in high school and junior high about how the system was working against us. So it was basically wanting to do something social.” UCLA proved crucial to the making of his career, but it was his thesis film, Killer of Sheep, which grabbed attention. The storyline itself was deceptively simple, a realist look at a black neighbourhood, where the main character Stan works in a slaughterhouse (hence the title). It was shot on weekends for less than $10,000 over 1972 and 1973, in the Watts neighbourhood. “I never looked at it in the ways of a feature film, I looked it as a story. I was trying to tell a story about a community. Nothing to do with length just trying to tell a story. There was nothing that was very daunting about filmmaking at that time, I guess being kinda naïve, it guess it never dawned on you that it was a major thing. I was just looking at it like a job.”

Hollywood has for the most part marginalised the representations of blacks within its films. From the overtly racist Birth of a Nation, to the lazy “coons” of Dumbo or the violence and gang-life of blaxploitation, certain stereotypes predominated, or at least helped marginalise other views. Even nobler figures like Sidney Poitier were criticised as pandering to a white audience. “It wasn’t Sidney Poitier I was reacting against. He made a lot of wonderful movies. It was the other groups that were problematic. Hollywood were making images like Birth of a Nation or vaudeville and were distorting the black image. Most of us got into film as a reaction against Hollywood.”


Is there extra pressure as a result, as someone like Burnett ends up being called a “black” director, rather than simply a film director? Does this becomes difficult to make films as a result? “Well yeah in a way, it’s interesting because in the States there’s still a lot of racism. There’s still difference, and the whole thing about black independent film came about because Hollywood wasn’t inclusive. Even in music, jazz and blues were race music, It is [difficult] and it isn’t. On one hand it is because people who are financing your films say you’re making a black film so there’s a limited audience. But politically, when someone says you’re a New Zealand filmmaker, it’s because you’re making films about New Zealand. It’s the same thing, we’re making films about black people. It shouldn’t be a negative. I don’t look at it as a negative.”

Burnett’s filmmaking output since Killer of Sheep has been infrequent, reflecting the difficulty of independent filmmaking and specifically, of black independent cinema production. In 1983 he made his second feature, My Brother’s Wedding, a film that has never been available on video, but is set for a re-release with the DVD of Killer of Sheep. In 1990 he made To Sleep With Anger with Danny Glover, and since then, his output has been a lot more substantial. In a film like Killer of Sheep, and reportedly in his other films too, it is possible to see the influence of filmmakers like Jean Renoir, and his line “everybody has their reasons.” “It was one of the films that he did, The Southerner, that really affected me a lot. It was about two itinerant farmers, a black family and a white family, and it was first time both of them were treated humanely and equally. If it was made by an American, it would have been focused on the white family and told through their eyes. The film was criticised for that [approach]. But in later years I realised that it was because he didn’t fit the mould, he didn’t perpetuate the racist mould that you find in a lot of directors of that time.”

Burnett’s later films have often looked at a generation away from the civil rights movements. The way things have changed since the 60s has also had a big influence. “It’s interesting because what happens during the 60s was that there’s a lot of progressive things happening. People felt like they can make a change in society and they did. But now everything has sort of collapsed in a way, the school systems and equal opportunity, things they tried to adjust for some of the wrongs done in the past, quota systems and affirmative action, have eroded. It’s still an illusion, because people feel that by giving black people an opportunity it takes away from the white population. The system’s built on affirmative action for whites not blacks.” And Burnett doesn’t see it as getting much better now. “The middle class is shrinking for whites and blacks, there’s a lot of outsourcing, people are losing their jobs, and a lot of people are homeless. There’s a lot more fear and concern for the future than there was in the 60s and the 70s. The reasons we made the film, Killer of Sheep, it seems like a lot more innocent. Iraq has drained a lot of resources away from America. And the people affected by this the most are people of colour.”


What also makes things even more challenging for a filmmaker like Burnett is that he has to work outside of the dominant Hollywood structure. Hollywood, for all its gadgetry and excitement, has also had an enormous influence in representing blacks in cinema, not only to Americans, but to a global audience. And for a filmmaker like Burnett who tries to show something different, it becomes difficult for audiences (who don’t have face-to-face contact in everyday life with black people) to step outside what they’ve seen through institutions like Hollywood. “It’s very difficult. It’s something you have to do. For example as to why it’s important I see my films in different places in Europe – I remember screening To Sleep With Anger, and people coming up to me and saying ‘I didn’t know black people had washing machines’, ‘where are the drugs’, ‘are you trying to clean up the image’. It’s a tiny minority of people involved in drugs and crimes. But Hollywood gives that impression that every black person is involved in drug-dealing and crime. If you have a kid you want people thinking you have these opportunities. When I went to school, they limited the choices I could have made.”

While digital technology has constantly been touted as a way to break some of these dominant stereotypes, as a way of democratising ideas and speech. Burnett can still see the problems. “It can, but I think the problem is you still have to show it. You need to arrive at that. Being able to distribute and exhibit the film, because that’s what really counts. Hollywood still controls the maker. We need to get digital cinemas established, so the filmmakers can make some money and pay their actors.”

But at least now, we have the ability to see a film like Killer of Sheep, even if its belated thirty year re-release has been a long, long time coming. “It wasn’t made to be distributed theatrically. It was a student film and it was shown underground. When Milestone came on board, we had to get the musical rights. You wonder if a film is relevant at a particular time and place, and thirty years later people are still excited about it. It’s strange for me.” Killer of Sheep still feels unique, a multi-faceted view of blacks that doesn’t seek to fit its characters into a box of good or bad, or a particular genre. Its characters aren’t black stereotypes, or black characters that stand in for other things, they’re just people living their everyday lives. And this aspect still feels so subversive. What’s strange is that few filmmakers since have sought to create a similarly complex representation, and you wonder if things have really changed from the earlier simplistic representations. “There’s a very subtle change, I think what you find interesting is Hollywood is more accessible to other filmmakers, like black filmmakers, but they’re doing the same movies with the stories they tell, like comedies. I think what we were begging for in the 60s and 70s was telling a variety of stories. I think something like The Cosby Show was a positive show, but it was too clean. We want to see different kinds of conflicts, not necessarily positive things. Just representations of reality.”