A l'occasion du "Mois des Noirs" aux USA,le cinéma de Harlem, présente une série de films dont celui de Charles Burnett, un classique, "Killers of Sheep" (Tueur de moutons)

Publié par Elsie HAAS sur 25 Février 2007, 11:41am

Catégories : #Archives 2

Killer of Sheep

Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep takes the immediacy of Italian neo-Realist cinema and shapes it into a dreamy, beautiful montage of everyday life in Watts, Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s. The National Society of Film Critics chose Killer of Sheep as one of the 100 Essential Films of all time. A National Treasure, Killer of Sheep was selected for the National Film Registry, but this lost classic has remained in obscurity for nearly 30 years.

Films Background

Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a teacup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife to the radio, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.

The film was shot in roughly a year of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000, paid for partially by a Louis B. Mayer grant of $3,000, and also out of the pocket of Burnett himself, who was working at a small, boutique casting agency at the time. Shot on location with a mostly amateur cast, with much handheld camera work, episodic narrative and a gritty documentary-style cinematography, Killer of Sheep has been compared by film critics and scholars to Italian neorealist films like Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief and Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan. However, Burnett cites Basil Wright’s Songs of Ceylon and Night Mail and Jean Renoir’s The Southerner as his main influences.

The film stood apart from other more overtly political independents of the day in its understated simplicity. Burnett explains, “I come from a working-class environment and I wanted to express what the realities were. People were trying to get jobs, and once they found jobs they were fully concerned with keeping them. And they were confronted with other problems, with serious problems at home for example, which made things much more difficult."

Killer of Sheep played at a handful of colleges around the United States received the Critics’ Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1981. In 1990, the Library of Congress declared it a national treasure and placed it among the first 50 films entered in the National Film Registry for its historical significance. In 2002, the National Society of Film Critics also selected the film as one of the 100 Essential Films of all time. Despite these accolades, the film never saw popular distribution due to the expense of the music rights (including songs by Louis Armstrong, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Gershwin, Rachmaninov, Paul Robeson and Earth, Wind & Fire on the soundtrack) and in its rare viewings at festivals and museums it was shown on ragged 16mm prints. Now, 30 years later, the new 35mm print, restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, is ready for its long-awaited theatrical release.

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Imagenation, a Harlem-based organization, was established in 1997 to counteract negative images and stereotypes that are propagated about people of color, through mass media; and, to establish a chain of independent art-house cinemas. Imagenation uses independent cinema and progressive music to foster solidarity and cross-cultural exchange throughout the African Diaspora, with special focus on the USA and South Africa.