in, the neighborhood you live in, the school you go to, your family, or any place else where you have shared experiences and/ or interests with other people or places. 2. Collect 3–5 images that help define this community visually. You may choose existing images or you can take new pictures, or combine the two. Think about how each image expresses your unique point of view. How does the depiction of people and place communicate something? What does the lighting tell us? How does the framing of the image inform the viewer? Now, think about the order in which you can display these images to describe an experience or tell a story. 3. How does a collection of images communicate a fuller and more inclusive story about family and community? 4. Title your collection of images. How can a title give more meaning or information about the community you are describing?
Donald Bogle. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films . Viking Press, 1973.
a Black film.’ … Regeneration demonstrates that despite incredible social, cultural, and economic hurdles, there has always been a Black creative class committed to producing work that examines social concerns, offers hope, and dares to dream. Moreover, this exhibition recognizes cinema as an art form and presents historical works by and about African Americans alongside selected works by contemporary Black artists to demonstrate the persistence of certain themes and ideas in different eras and mediums. “The desire to see oneself in images and stories, aspirational or imagined, is a human impulse that long predates movies. This could be challenging for early Black filmgoers, however, because the dominant images seen in film created and perpetuated stereotypical notions of Black people … Regeneration explores the myriad ways in which Black artists, filmmakers, and critics navigated an often prejudiced and segregated system over seven decades, either finding ways to work within dominant industry structures or choosing to develop their own dynamic creative communities.”
expectations do you have of Killer of Sheep ? • What does the title communicate? What expectations do you have based on the title alone?
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Information
Russell Sharman. Moving Pictures: An Introduction to Cinema. Creative Commons License , 2020.
From the Killer of Sheep website at https://www.killerofsheep.com/:
Jacqueline Najuma Stewart. Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity . University of California Press, 2005. Robert C. Toll. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford University Press, 1974. E. Thematic Lesson Plan
Killer of Sheep examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970’s 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 humor. Killer of Sheep was shot on location in Watts in a series of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000, most of which was grant money. Finished in 1977 and shown sporadically, its reputation grew and grew until it won a prize at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival. Since then, the Library of Congress has declared it a national treasure as one of the first fifty on the National Film Registry and the National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all time.
What Does Black Cinema Mean to You?
The idea of black film is always a question and never an answer.
In the classroom, display your collection of images on a blank wall like an art installation.
—Michael Gillespie, Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film, 2016
2. Interview with Charles Burnett in Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971 (2022), pp. 222–29.
• What do you notice? What do these images make you wonder?
Words set in SMALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide).
Explore: Group discussion
• What can you learn by looking at one picture at a time? What is communicated differently when you look at the collection? • Do you feel the story you want to convey is told effectively through images alone? If not, what can you add?
Reflect
• What are the influences of music and nonverbal communication for Charles Burnett? • What are some of the similarities between journalism, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING, and Charles Burnett’s style of INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING? What are the differences? • What impact can filmmaking have in opening up conversations in your community? Activity: Photo essay—What Is the Story of Your People? In the interview cited above, Charles Burnett talks about his admiration for older generations of Black Americans and his desire to tell stories about his community. Keep his comments in mind as you develop your own community project.
Explore: Group discussion
• What do you think Professor Michael Gillespie is getting at with this statement? • From the dawn of cinema, BLACK moviemakers have pushed back against segregation and prejudice. What are ways that we can now resist DOMINANT NARRATIVES to make sure our whole stories are included in history?
• How do you think Charles Burnett would answer what Black cinema means to him? • How does Killer of Sleep tell a COUNTERNARRATIVE of people living in Los Angeles that defies STEREOTYPES of people and place? • How can film be used as a learning tool to acknowledge the multiplicity of experiences
Film viewing
Although Charles Burnett’s 1978 film Killer of Sheep falls outside the exhibition timeline, it is in the direct lineage of and evolves from the efforts of Black filmmakers who came before him. Killer of Sheep is an independent film, made outside of a movie studio. This means that, budget constraints aside, Burnett was able to realize his aesthetic vision and tell the story on his own terms.
Reflect: Reading
and resist creating monolithic cultures? • How can we use movies to help us tell more diverse and inclusive stories?
1. Doris Berger and Rhea L. Combs. “What Is Black Cinema?” In Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971 (2022), pp. 29–31.
Further reading
“Charles Burnett recalls having heated debates about the question of what constitutes a Black film while studying at UCLA in the 1970s: ‘We didn’t come to a conclusion, but it was easier to say what was not
Before watching the movie, consider the following:
Allyson Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, eds. L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema . University of California Press, 2015.
1. Think about a community you are a part of. This can be your friend group, a club you’re
• Charles Burnett recalls the issues and types of film that fired his imagination during his student days. Based on his comments, what
*Words set in ALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide). Curriculum Text and Guide © 2022 Academy Museum Foundation. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License and is not intended for commercial use.
*Words set in ALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide).
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