Killer of Sheep

Charles Burnett was one of the "LA School" of African American filmmakers that emerged from the UCLA film department in the 1970s, and  was his thesis film. It is simultaneously naturalistic and poetic, witty and heartbreaking. The story centers on Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a blue-collar worker from the Watts area of Los Angeles, whose job in a slaughterhouse barely keeps his family above water. It documents his struggle to retain dignity in the face of grinding deprivation and disquieting temptations, and the alienation that threatens to break him away from his family. It also provides a sympathetic yet clear-eyed portrait of a community assaulted by poverty and lack of opportunity, yet it manages to remain hopeful.

 was added to the National Film Registry in 1990.