Killer of Sheep

Selected by the Directors Branch. Introduction by writer-producer-director Charles Burnett.

Charles Burnett filmed his radically nuanced black-and-white portrait of a family in Watts as his MFA thesis at UCLA, and though music rights issues kept it from getting a theatrical release following its 1978 premiere at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, over the decades it has gained classic status. In 1990, it was selected by the Library of Congress National Film Registry, and in 2017, Burnett received an Honorary Award as "a resolutely independent and influential film pioneer who has chronicled the lives of black Americans with eloquence and insight."

DIRECTOR: Charles Burnett. WRITTEN BY: Charles Burnett. CAST: Henry Gale Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett. 1978. 80 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. Preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

All film screenings in the Branch Selects series are available here.  

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.