A film that U.S. film critics have hailed as one of the “100 essential films” of all time is the Bermuda International Film Festival’s June Film Series presentation.
Killer of Sheep will screen on Thursday June 21 at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.
Tickets can be reserved by e-mailing the festival at info@biff.bm. Please specify which screening you are reserving tickets for.
Director Charles Burnett’s film examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.
Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter. The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life – sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humour.
Killer of Sheep was shot on location in Watts in a series of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000. Finished in 1977 and shown sporadically, its reputation grew until it won the FIPRESCI (International Critics’) Prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival.
Problems with music clearance meant that the film went unreleased theatrically until this spring – but it has quickly become an arthouse cinema sensation, breaking the house record at IFC in New York
The film was considered such a landmark of American independent and African-American cinema that it was one of the first 50 culturally significant films to be selected for preservation in the Library of Congress by the National Film Registry.
The National Society of Film Critics in the U.S. selected it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all time.
Media
Contact:
Duncan
Hall
Deputy
Festival Director
Bermuda
International Film Festival
Tel:
293-3456
Fax:
293-7769
E-mail:
deputydirector@biff.bm