KILLER OF SHEEP is part of twentieth anniversary of Milestone Films at the IFC Center
KILLER OF SHEEP (Charles Burnett, 1977)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
November 24-28
Series runs through March 27
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.killerofsheep.com
Founded in 1990 by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller as a way to preserve great orphaned works, Milestone Films is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a series of weekend screenings at the IFC Center. The festival began November 12-14 with Luchino Visconti’s ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS and November 19-21 with Michael Powell’s THE EDGE OF THE WORLD and continues this weekend with Charles Burnett’s low-budget feature-length debut, KILLER OF SHEEP, which Milestone recently restored with the soundtrack intact; the film had not been available on VHS or DVD for decades because of music rights problems that were finally cleared, setting up a wildly successful theatrical run at the IFC Center in 2007. (The soundtrack includes such seminal black artists as Etta James, Dinah Washington, Little Walter, and Paul Robeson.) Shot on weekends for less than $10,000, KILLER OF SHEEP took four years to put together and another four years to get noticed, when it won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival. Reminiscent of the work of Jean Renoir and the Italian neo-Realists, the film tells a simple story about a family just trying to get by, struggling to survive in their tough Watts neighborhood in the mid-1970s. The slice-of-life scenes are sometimes very funny, sometimes scary, but always poignant, as Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) trudges to his dirty job in a slaughterhouse in order to provide for his wife (Kaycee Moore) and children (Jack Drummond and Angela Burnett). Every day he is faced with new choices, from participating in a murder to buying a used car engine, but he takes it all in stride. The motley cast of characters, including Charles Bracy and Eugene Cherry, is primarily made up of nonprofessional actors with a limited range of talent, but that is all part of what makes it all feel so real. KILLER OF SHEEP was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1989, the second year of the program, making it among the first fifty to be selected, in the same group as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE GODFATHER, DUCK SOUP, ALL ABOUT EVE, and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. The Milestone series continues December 3-5 with Orson Welles’s THE TRIAL and December 10-12 with Gillo Pontecorvo and Maleno Malenotti’s THE WIDE BLUE ROAD.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who have teamed up for such documentaries as THE BOYS OF BARAKA (2005), the Oscar-nominated JESUS CAMP (2006), and one segment of FREAKONOMICS (2010), spent a year on the rather indistinct corner of 12th St. & Delaware Ave. in the small community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where an intense battle is waging. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic, while on the other side is the prolife Pregnancy Care Center. Ewing and Grady are able to get the primarily young, poor pregnant women considering abortion to open up and share their stories as they face one of the most difficult decisions anybody will ever have to make. The women are met by a constant handful of protesters outside the abortion clinic, who try to get them to change their mind and go across the street. Several of the women go to the Pregnancy Care Center by accident, believing it to be the abortion clinic — which is precisely why the center set up shop there — where they are not told of their mistake and are offered money and clothing to not go through with the termination of their pregnancies. They become pawns in a religious and moral battle that Ewing and Grady show can be as infuriating as it is heartbreaking, although the filmmakers do an excellent job of remaining neutral, not casting judgment. Interestingly, while the workers at the prolife center have a lot to say on the issue, the people at the abortion clinic are far more cautious and reserved, with the owner-doctor never being seen on camera but only pulling up in his car (perhaps at least partly for safety reasons, as Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered during the time the film was being made). This special screening of 12th & DELAWARE, which will be followed by a Q&A with Ewing and Grady, is part of the fourteenth season of IFC’s Stranger than Fiction series, which continues November 23 with Maximilian Schell’s MARLENE (1984) and November 30 with John-Keith Wasson’s SURVIVING HITLER: A LOVE STORY (2010).
