Born in Mississippi and raised in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, Charles Burnett is an independent filmmaker whose work has been praised for its portrayal of the African-American experience. A 4K restoration of his first feature film, Killer of Sheep, which Burnett wrote, directed, produced, photographed, and edited in 1977, is now in theaters through Kino Lorber. Since then, the United States Library of Congress has declared the film a “national treasure,” as one of the first 50 films on the National Film Registry, and the National Society of Film Critics selected it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all time. His other films include The Glass Shield, a groundbreaking narrative on police corruption and violence, My Brother’s Wedding, To Sleep With Anger (starring Danny Glover), and his lost 1999 film, The Annihilation of Fish starring James Earl Jones and Lynn Redgrave, which was finally released in early 2025. Burnett’s nonfiction work includes The Blues, produced by Martin Scorsese, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, and the PBS documentary Power To Heal, on the painful history of segregation at southern U.S. Hospitals. (Photo courtesy Milestone Films and the Walker Art Center.)
