Honorary Oscars: Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep"
Friday, November 3, 2017 at 6:00PM We will be revisiting work from this year's Honorary Oscar winners. Here's Tim on Charles Burnett...
For most of its existence, the 1977 Killer of Sheep existed more in the realm of legend than concrete film history. It was made for a paltry $10,000 by director-producer (-writer-cinemtographer-editor) Charles Burnett as his master's thesis project in UCLA, taking five years to complete. Owing to the substantial expense of securing rights to the music Burnett wished to use, the film was never able to acquire distribution, and for nearly thirty years remained more talked about than seen, though it was fiercely admired by those lucky ones who had attended a screening. It was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1990, but still could only be found mostly by accident, as it flitted around the film underground on increasingly degraded 16mm prints.
In 2007, 30 years after the film was completed, the UCLA Film & Television archive finally took steps to secure the future of the film, creating a new 35mm print from the 16mm negative. Milestone Films secured the music rights for $150,000, and the film finally had its first commercial release, to enormous critical acclaim. Burnett had never stopped working, but the restoration of Killer of Sheep unquestionably brought his reputation to new heights. It's hard to imagine him receiving his honorary Oscar this year without Killer of Sheep having so triumphantly risen from the ashes.
