Charles Burnett's 1977 film, Killer of Sheep is one of the towering classics of African American cinema. As a deliberate counterpoint to popular blaxploitation films of the period, it combines harsh images of the banality of everyday oppression with scenes of lyrical beauty, and depictions of stark realism with flights of comic fancy. From Street to Screen: Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep is the first book-length collection dedicated to the film and designed to introduce viewers to this still relatively unknown masterpiece. Beginning life as Burnett's master's thesis project in 1973, and shot on a budget of $10,000, Killer of Sheep immediately became a cornerstone of the burgeoning movement in African American film that came to be known variously as the LA School or LA Rebellion. By bringing together a wide variety of material, this volume covers both the politics and aesthetics of the film as well as its deeper social and contextual histories. This expansive and incisive critical companion will serve equally as the perfect starting point and standard reference for all viewers, whether they are already familiar with the film or coming to it for the first time.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Killer of Sheep: Charles Burnett and the Poetry of Oppression
David C. Wall and Michael T. Martin
PART ONE: Situating Killer of Sheep: Time/Place/Circumstance
Cinema and Black Liberation (David E. James)
Struggles for the Sign in the Black Atlantic: Los Angeles Collective of Black Filmmakers (Michael T. Martin)
Charles Burnett: A Reconsideration of Third Cinema (Amy Ongiri)
Charles Burnett—Consummate Cineaste (Michael T. Martin)
PART TWO: Reading Killer of Sheep
Toward a Geo-Cinematic Hermeneutics: Representations of Los Angeles in Non-Industrial Cinema – [Charles Burnett's] Killer of Sheep (David E. James)
An Aesthetic Appropriate to Conditions: Killer of Sheep, (Neo) Realism, and the Documentary
Impulse (Paula J. Massood)
Neo-Realism Meets the Blues in Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (Keith Mehlinger)
Killer of Sheep (James Naremore)
Killer of Sheep (Jeffrey Skoller)
Nous revenons à nos moutons: Regarding Animals in Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (Sarah O'Brien)
PART THREE
Screenplay
Biography and Filmography
Index
About the Author :
Michael T. Martin is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University Bloomington. He is editor or coeditor of seven anthologies, and (with David C. Wall) The Politics and Poetics of Black Film: Nothing But a Man and Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door. He also directed and coproduced the award-winning feature documentary on Nicaragua In the Absence of Peace, distributed by Third World Newsreel.
David C. Wall is Assistant Professor of Visual and Media Studies at Utah State University. He edited (with Michael T. Martin) The Politics and Poetics of Black Film: Nothing But a Man and Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Other recent work can be found in Nineteenth-Century Studies and A Companion to the Historical Film.
Review :
"With From Street to Screen, Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall thoughtfully assemble some of the most compelling scholarship on Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, providing an essential collection of essays for those who want to understand the cinematic impact of Burnett and his seminal American film. The engaging essays situate, historicize, and textually examine the deeply poetic and neo-realist rendering of Black life in Burnett's film while the inclusion of the screenplay, biography, and filmography lend this compendium to a range of pedagogical impulses."—Samantha N. Sheppard, Cornell University, author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen
"Michael Martin and David Wall bring long-awaited attention to a film that reflects the pioneering spirit of L.A Rebellion filmmakers. Their edited collection gathers a series of texts that inform the poetic politics of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep, a unique film to date about how to survive in 1970's Watts. A historical and filmic landmark, Killer of Sheep captures the ghetto and its residents in beautiful black and white cinematography."—Delphine Letort, author of The Spike Lee Brand: A Study of Documentary Filmmaking
"A masterpiece of American cinema, Killer of Sheep finally receives a much-deserved sustained study of its form, style, and fascinating production history. From Street to Screen brings together rich contextualizing essays, original readings, an in-depth interview with director Charles Burnett, and the film's original screenplay. A comprehensive sourcebook, this volume is an indispensable companion to the film and to independent Black cinema more generally."—Allyson Nadia Field, University of Chicago, author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black Modernity.
