St. Louis Library Presents – DIRECTORS CUT: THE FILMS OF CHARLES BURNETT Beginning October 18th

The St. Louis Central Library downtown (1301 Olive Blvd) is teaming up with Cinema St. Louis and the St. Louis International Film Festival to present DIRECTORS CUT: THE FILMS OF CHARLES BURNETT.

Charles Burnett is a writer-director whose work has received extensive honors. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, his family soon moved to the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Burnett studied creative writing at UCLA before entering the University’s graduate film program. His thesis project, Killer of Sheep (1977), won accolades at film festivals and a critical devotion; in 1990, it was among the first titles named to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. European financing allowed Burnett to shoot his second feature, My Brother’s Wedding (1983), but a rushed debut prevented the filmmaker from completing his final cut until 2007. In 1988, Burnett was awarded the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur (“genius grant”) Fellowship. His first widely released film, To Sleep with Anger (1990), was also chosen for the National Film Registry, and Burnett became the first African American recipient of the National Society of Film Critics’ best screenplay award. Burnett made the highly acclaimed “Nightjohn” in 1996 for the Disney Channel; his subsequent television works include “Oprah Winfrey Presents: The Wedding” (1998), “Selma, Lord, Selma” (1999), an episode of the seven-part series “Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues” (2003) and “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property” (2003), which was shown on the PBS series “Independent Lens.” Burnett has been awarded grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the J. P. Getty Foundation. In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art showcased his work with a month-long retrospective.

DIRECTORS CUT: THE FILMS OF CHARLES BURNETT is a series of four films by director Charles Burnett. The fourth film, KILLER OF SHEEP,  will feature a special appearance by Burnett and is part of the St. Louis International Film Festival. All films are free and are screened in the library’s Central Auditorium.

Here’s the line-up for DIRECTORS CUT: THE FILMS OF CHARLES BURNETT:

NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY October 18^th 6:30pm
2003 – 58 minutes

n 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Virginia that resulted in the murder of local slave owners and their families—as well Turner’s execution. At once an ambivalent cultural hero, a revolutionary figure and a subject of countless literary works, Turner has remained a “troublesome property” for those who have struggled to understand him and the meaning of his revolt, often resulting in controversy. As literary critic Henry Louis Gates explains: “There is no Nat Turner to recover… you have to create the man and his voice.”

The earliest source of information about Turner, The Confessions of Nat Turner, was not written by him at all, assembled instead out of a series of jail cell interviews by white Virginia lawyer Thomas R. Gray. The man portrayed in this first telling of the Nat Turner story clearly saw himself as a prophet, steeped in the traditions of apocalyptic Christianity. However, this “confession” raised the question of whether Turner was an inspired and brilliant religious leader in search of freedom for his people or a deluded lunatic leading slaves to their doom.

NAT TURNER: A TROUBLESOME PROPERTY examines how the story of Turner and his revolt have been continuously re-told since 1831. Historians Eugene Genovese and Herbert Aptheker discuss how the figure of Turner became a metaphor for racial tension. Religious scholar Vincent Harding and legal scholar Martha Minow reflect on America’s attitudes towards violence. Professor of psychiatry and race relations expert Dr. Alvin Poussaint and actor Ossie Davis recall how Nat Turner became a hero in the black community. And when William Styron published his 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner—inventing a sexually charged relationship between Turner and a white teenaged girl he later killed—it unleashed one of the most bitter intellectual battles of the 1960s. Turner’s rebellion continues to raise new questions about the nature of terrorism and other forms of violent resistance to oppression.

A unique collaboration between MacArthur Genius Award feature director Charles Burnett, acclaimed historian of slavery Kenneth S. Greenberg and Academy Award-nominated documentary producer Frank Christopher, NAT TURNER adopts an innovative structure by interspersing documentary footage and interviews with dramatizations of different versions of the story, using a new actor to represent Turner in each. The filmmakers have interviewed a broad range of contemporary African American and white descendants of those involved in the revolt, historians, writers and artists, and weave these interviews with dramatic recreations based on folklore, novels and plays—reflecting the multifaceted legacy of Nat Turner in America today.

MY BROTHER’S WEDDING October 25^th 6:3pm
1983 115 minutes

When we first see Pierce Mundy (Everette Silas) in director Charles Burnett’s feature follow-up to Killer of Sheep (1977) he’s on the move.  Making his way on a summer afternoon down a cracked sidewalk in South Central Los Angeles, he’s heading to see the mother of his best friend about to return from prison.  A voice from behind catches him up short: “Hey, Pierce!” In the long shot that introduces him, Pierce turns mid-stride, looks to the woman calling him and in a single fluid move, looks away, exasperated, back toward his intended destination.  “Come see my sister’s baby!”  Though he’s tall and lean, we feel the petulant weight in his every step as he retreats in the direction he’s just come.

This sequence, though brief, deftly establishes the major themes of My Brother’s Wedding, and the power of Burnett’s unadorned style.  Pulled in opposing directions by loyalty to family and friends, Pierce feels suspended in place.  Recently laid off from his factory job, he marks time working at his family’s dry cleaning store under the watchful eye of his mother (Jessie Holmes) and swapping loaded jabs with his brother’s upper-middle-class fiancée (Gaye Shannon-Burnett).  In the face of a diminished future, the return of Pierce’s best friend, Soldier (Ronald E. Bell), holds out a nostalgic escape to childhood, albeit one burdened by the decimation of his generation through violence and incarceration.  “Where is everyone?” Soldier asks of the old crew.  “It’s you and me,” Pierce replies.

While the contour of Pierce’s situation is familiar, Burnett fleshes it out with richly observed detail.  Shooting on location, Burnett doesn’t simply capture locales; he reveals, through incidents and episodes both humorous and poignant, the network of relationships that pull and tug at the lives on screen.  The revelation of character becomes seamlessly bound to the revelation of community. When, in the film’s finale, Pierce once again faces a choice of which direction to turn, both literally and metaphorically, his decision resonates well beyond his personal history.

THE GLASS SHIELD October 29^th 1pm
1994 119 minutes

Charles Burnett followed up To Sleep with Anger with this sorely underrated L.A. crime drama. Michael Boatman stars as rookie cop J.J., the first black deputy within his department; he quickly experiences firsthand a deep-seated culture of racism within the LAPD, and in an effort to fit in he participates in the questionable arrest of Teddy Woods (Ice Cube). But when J.J. discovers that he has unconsciously made himself complicit in a far-reaching frame-up, he and fellow ostracized cop Barbara (Victoria Dillard) set out to bring a clandestine and racist power structure within the LAPD to its knees. Also featuring strong turns by Bernie Casey and Elliott Gould and released around the time of the O.J. Simpson trial, this gripping thriller is Burnett’s most stylized and explicitly political film to date.

KILLER OF SHEEP November 6^th 1:30pm
1978 83 minutes

The St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) honors legendary filmmaker Charles Burnett with a Lifetime Achievement Award and screens KILLER OF SHEEP at the library. Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” focuses on everyday life in black communities in a manner unseen in American cinema, combining lyrical elements with a starkly neo-realist, documentary-style approach that chronicles the unfolding story with depth and riveting simplicity. This 1978 classic examines the black Los Angeles neighborhood 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. He suffers from the emotional side effects of his bloody occupation to such a degree that his entire life unhinges. One of the first 50 films to be selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, “Killer of Sheep” was cited by the National Society of Film Critics as one of the 100 Essential Films. New York Times critic Manohla Dargis calls the film “an American masterpiece, independent to the bone.”

SLIFF will also be screening Burnett’s TO SLEEP WITH ANGER Sunday, Nov. 6 at 8:00pm at The Tivoli Theater as part of The St. Louis International Film Festival