“I think a strong case can be made that Charles Burnett is the most gifted and important black filmmaker this country has ever had. But there’s a fair chance you’ve never heard of him.”  Jonathan Rosenbaum

Director Charles Burnett has the dubious distinction of being famous for not being famous. Despite critical acclaim, legions of awards, dedicated retrospectives and his legendary status among cinephiles he remains “the least well-known great American filmmaker”.

Charles Burnett and his work overwhelmingly deserve all the attention they can get and we are delighted to have shown a selection of his films at Watershed as part of Celebrating Black History Month.

Burnett has enjoyed a career spanning more than three decades. He was part of a remarkable group of young Black filmmakers coming out of UCLA in the 1970s who were appalled at the trend for Blaxploitation films at the time (which they viewed as culturally belittling).

Instead, Burnett and his contemporaries (including Julie Dash, Billie Woodberry and Haile Gerima) set out to make a new form of independent cinema, films that despite their predominately Black subject matters, were about the American experience.

His extraordinary body of work began with his UCLA thesis film, Killer Of Sheep, now considered an American masterpiece and one of the most poetic dramas ever made about family. It was deemed to be so culturally and artistically important that it became one of the first contemporary works selected for the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

The Charles Burnett films selected for Celebrating Black History Month are similarly focused on family and community, with a strong emphasis on their universal rewards and burdens.

In this event Kunle Olulode, the curator of our Charles Burnett season, is in discussion with Ray Brown, the producer of Burnett's upcoming feature 83 Days.

The event was hosted by Kunle Olulode, Chair of The New Black Network. The New Black Network is a group of fifteen of the leading exhibitors of black film which supports the development of black film exhibition.

Posted on Sun 6 Oct 2013.

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