PRESS CLIPS

CLICK HERE FOR BLOG COVERAGE OF KILLER OF SHEEP

"An American masterpiece, independent to the bone... This may be Mr. Burnett's most radical truth-telling."
MANOHLA DARGIS, NEW YORK TIMES

"A masterpiece. One of the most insightful and authentic dramas about African-American life on film. One of the finest American films, period."
DAVE KEHR, INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

"One of the masterpieces of American cinema!"
HOWIE MOVSHOVITZ, NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED (Listen to the radio interview with Charles Burnett, Lisa Kennedy and Dennis Doros)

"Way ahead of its time 30 years ago, and just as stunning today, Killer of Sheep is one of those marvels of original moviemaking that keeps hope of artistic independence alive... Here's to the miracle of a buried classic granted the opposite of a killing—here's to life. A"
LISA SCHWARTZBAUM, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"Speaks to the enduring power of poetic cinema, of films with genuine artistic vision that create mood and capture emotion in ways only motion pictures can."
KENNETH TURAN, LA TIMES

"The message that emerges—life is difficult but lovely just the same—is as understated as it is heroic, and in a sense, applies to the man who made the film."
MARY MCNAMARA, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Record-breaking Opening for "Killer of Sheep" at IFC Center."
EUGENE HERNANDEZ, INDIEWIRE

"Stunning...humane in spirit, tentatively hopeful at the end, but rock-hard and pitiless in its honesty. Burnett persuades you that you're seeing the world as it really is for these characters...They have the grandeur of unchallengeable fact.... I feel safe in calling it one of the best new films of 2007."
STUART KLAWANS, THE NATION

"A welcome breath of fresh air in the world of American Cinema."
FLOYD WEBB, EBONY/JET MAGAZINES

"Affectingly beautiful...Burnett used many kinds of African-American music on the soundtrack, and the movie itself has the bedraggled eloquence of an old blues record."
DAVID DENBY, NEW YORKER

"The film of the season, if not the year, is a Southern California slice-of-life from 1977 that hasn't aged a day... A stirring and sophisticated evocation of working-class Watts."
NATHAN LEE, VILLAGE VOICE

"As fresh and observational as it was 30 years ago, Killer of Sheep seems even more universal now. Killer of Sheep is an urban pastoral... sweet, sardonic, deeply sad and very funny."
J. HOBERMAN, VILLAGE VOICE

"What on the surface looks so simple is in fact a densely layered, morally complex film operating on myriad levels at once. See "Killer of Sheep." Then see it again, and again. It's one of those truly rare movies that just get better."
ANNE HORNADAY, THE WASHINGTON POST

"Miraculous... hypnotic... the surging power of old blues."
MICHAEL SRAGOW, THE BALTIMORE SUN

"It would be shocking if a finer film than Killer of Sheep—American or otherwise—is released in 2007."

Article and Interview with Charles Burnett
JAMES PONSOLDT, FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

Interview with Henry Sanders, Ross Lipman, Danny Glover and Dennis Doros. You can hear it on the net, or download the MP3 at
WNYC LEONARD LOPATE SHOW

"No movie you'll see this year packs more life into a camera's eye."
JAY CARR, AMNY

"One of a kind."
ANDY KLEIN, LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT

"A landmark in black cinema, as well as a film of such eloquence that its absence from screens could only be considered a sin."
JOHN ANDERSON, NEWSDAY

"Killer of Sheep is a ballad, an anthem, a hymn of consistently beautiful and confounding images. So lovely. So profound."
LISA KENNEDY, DENVER POST

"Burnett invests his images of ordinary activities with such emotional resonance that the everyday becomes luminous and poetic... Burnett has made a minor masterpiece that avoids sentimentalizing society's victims, indulging in political cant, and implicitly exalting nihilistic behavior. The film conveys that there is hope and beauty buried in misery, and it does so with nary a false note."
LEONARD QUART, THE VILLAGER

"...without qualification or equivocation, essential viewing for anyone who cares about the cinema as an art form. It's tempting to invoke "the poetry of the everyday" in describing "Killer of Sheep," just as it's easy to compare it to neorealism or verite, but Burnett's haunting visual motifs and his splendid use of music, at once ironic and hopeful, give the film an almost dreamlike texture. In these moments "Killer of Sheep" transcends its realistic aesthetic, and, in his transcendence, achieves something heartbreaking and sublime."
CHRIS WISNIEWSKI, INDIEWIRE

"Even if you belong to that modest group of film buffs who've actually seen "Killer of Sheep," this restoration feels like an entirely new movie. Burnett is profoundly uninterested in boosterism or propaganda or false optimism. He has belonged to the long tradition of prophets without honor, but he may finally be getting his due. In his peculiar and lonely fashion he's not only the most important African-American director but one of the most distinctive filmmakers this country has ever produced."
ANDREW O'HEHIR, SALON.COM

"A landmark in the history of American realism, a classic film of black life, and nothing less than a masterpiece."
SAUL AUSTERLITZ, NEW YORK SUN

"A cinephile's Holy Grail... lingers in the mind and creates a series of inner city Sisyphean tableaus."
CHRIS VOGNAR, DALLAS MORNING NEWS

"With this rerelease, it's now clear that the roster of the 1970s renaissance filmmakers#151Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, De Palma#151needs to include Burnett."
RICHARD VON BUSACK, SILICON VALLEY METRO

"Through a relentless focus on character#15on everyday people and their everyday lives#151Burnett manages to find the universal in the specific, depicting the timeless struggle of men and women to#151as Washington sings#151ensure that the dust does not obscure the glow of the rose."
JUSTIN DEFREITAG, THE BERKELEY DAILY PLANET

"Haunting...socially relevant and poetic."
ROBERT DENERSTEIN, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

"Killer of Sheep is a revelation...a telling story of ghetto life that continues to resonate 30 years after the movie was made."
L. KENT WOLGAMOTT, LINCOLN JOURNAL-STAR, NEBRASKA

"A film full of miracles...in which the whole does more than exceed the sum of it utterly unknowable parts; it exceeds the sum of expectations, mythology and hype."
S.T. VANAIRSDALE, THE REELER

"Killer of Sheep can be seen (and reseen) as a great—the greatest—cinematic tone poem of American urban life."
DAVID EDELSTEIN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE

"[Killer of Sheep] casts a peculiar spell that by the end leaves you not only emotionally charged because of the people and places and events you've seen, but filled with a new sense of what movies are and what they can do."
GLENN KENNY, PREMIERE MAGAZINE

"******... Perfect."
MELISSA ANDERSON, TIME OUT NEW YORK

"It's hard not to hope that Killer of Sheep will influence a new generation of artists-of any color."
DAVID FEAR, TIME OUT NEW YORK

"A flat-out treasure, impervious to time."
JAY CARR, THE BOSTON GLOBE

"Charles Burnett is the most gifted and important black filmmaker this country has ever had."
JONATHAN ROSENBAUM, CHICAGO READER

"One of the most striking debuts in movie history."
TERRENCE RAFFERTY, GQ

Proclaimed a national treasure by the National Film Registry of the Library
of Congress.

"There may be no better contemporary American filmmaker who has so richly evoked the infinite varieties and textures of life, black or otherwise."
SCOTT FOUNDAS, LA WEEKLY

"If it were an Italian film from 1953, we would have every scene memorized."
MICHAEL TOLKIN, SCREENWRITER

"Visionary!"
EMMANUEL LEVY

"Soul-pounding. Blistering. Stunning."
THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE

"A gem."
CINEASTE

"A legend."
NASHVILLE SCENE