Charles Burnett on 'Killer of Sheep'

Charles Burnett, an independent black filmmaker born in Mississippi and raised in Los Angeles, made his first feature, 'Killer of Sheep' in 1977 while a graduate student at the University of California in Los Angeles. He is best known in the UK for his follow-up film 'My Brother's Wedding' (1983) and the bluesy 'To Sleep with Anger' (1990).

Was ‘Killer of Sheep’ a reaction to Hollywood?
‘It was more a reaction to a lot of the political movies that were being made at the time. There were so many of these films being made about working- class people being exploited by the management and then they form a union and then things inevitably get better. My response was that people were lucky if they even got a job and were able to hold on to it. When I started to do “Killer of Sheep”, I wanted to make something that was removed from my experience. The idea was that if you were dropped on the corner of 97th and Avalon in Watts, that’s what you would see. It was a slice of life that I saw.’

What spurred you to take the film course at UCLA back in the mid 1970s?
‘I was studying electronics and I had a job at the local library in the evenings. I had the afternoons off, so I usually just went to the movies. I started getting interested in cinematography and the camera. I was thinking about going to the University of Southern Califorina because it was really close to my house, but it was just too expensive. I went over to UCLA and saw that it was really cheap, so I went there instead.’

Was there a lot of creativity in the air at the time?
‘Yeah, because you had the civil-rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Black Panthers, all that stuff going on. Everyone was using art to express social concerns and most of the guys at the film school, especially the people of colour, were trying to change the Hollywood perception of society. It was a period when people were trying to define film and really consider it as an art form’.

What kind of films were you watching at UCLA?
‘I was especially interested in documentary. Pare Lorentz’s lyrical films, Robert Flaherty and Joris Ivens. I took a documentary class taught by Basil Wright who did “Song of Ceylon”. That really gave me a sense of direction. I remember having a conversation with Wright and he explained to me how he made “Song of Ceylon”. He told me you have to focus on a subject and always treat it with dignity and humanity. It was something I needed to hear. “Tell your story” is what he said.’

What are your memories of making ‘Killer of Sheep’?
‘The whole film was storyboarded and scripted and I wanted to create something that was the total opposite of Hollywood. I didn’t want to use back-lighting or anything like that. Film stock was relatively cheap back then.

‘I also wanted to bring film into the community and demystify it. We started with a modest crew at UCLA, but during the shoot people came and went as they pleased. At the end of the day, I didn’t ask those guys back and pared the production down. Charles Bracy (one of the actors in the film) helped out and the kids ended up doing the sound. It very relaxed. If people didn’t show up, we didn’t shoot. If they did, we would.
It was no big deal.’

‘Killer of Sheep’ opens at BFI Southbank and Barbican on Friday.

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