Appreciation for Charles Burnett

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This is a Criterion Channel exclusive hour-long interview by @iamroberttownsend of Charles Burnett the year he received his honorary Oscar. Burnett talks about growing up in South Central LA and the making of his films—mainly Killer of Sheep & To Sleep With Anger. Of all the movies I watched and reviewed in the last few days, Burnett was the film-maker I watched the most. His movies are some of the great stories of people who are not heroes or saints, not exactly villains or demons, but ordinary people attempting with great fury to survive every day on a world that seems to try toast upon them with no apparent coherence. His "heroes" are those we find in Chekhov or Dostoevsky, Adichie or an Edward P. Jones short story. His method of storytelling one is tempted to call surreal or dream-like if it wasn't so focused on such deadly real things that all of us seem to know of, but refuse to have to confront in our "entertainment" mediums like movies. I am one of the few among you that can see film as having the potential of being both art and/or entertainment—something that many "book" people chauvinistically refuse to do. Of course, despite my handle, my love of movies is much older than my love of books—but back to Burnett. His movies—whether it be Killer of Sheep (1977); Selma, Lord, Selma (1997); or Quiet as Kept (2007)—all strip away any highfaluting "sacredness" that we are taught to view protagonists and are able to show the true value of these people: what Chekhov says at the end of his story Uprooted, "their life was as little need of justification as any other." ¡Amen y vamanos! #movie #film #cinema #charlesburnett #roberttownsend #criterionchannel #blackfilmmakers #blackfilmsmatter #larebellion #blacklivesmatter #blackfilms #cinephile #cinephilenoir

A post shared by Ken's Bookshelf & Movieshelf (@rinehartstation) on Jun 29, 2020 at 11:10am PDT