Killer Of Sheep (1977)

WHO: Charles Burnett directed this.

WHAT: One of the most distinctive American films made in my lifetime, Killer of Sheep is finally being considered part of the independent film canon in a way that had eluded it for decades while it was relatively unavailable. I do recommend reading Adam Hartzell's piece on the film published here when a restoration premiered in San Francisco in 2007.

WHERE/WHEN: 7:15 tonight only at the Castro.

WHY: Tonight's double-bill of Killer Of Sheep and David Lynch's Eraserhead seems (as my fellow local blogger David Robson pointed out over twitter) seems inspired by the recent J. Hoberman article in the Sep/Oct. 2013 Film Comment (an article unavailable on the "free" internet) that pairs the films. Hoberman writes:

Eraserhead and Killer of Sheep were movies at the margins of the marginal, two student films made all the more eccentric by their feature-length running times and their origins, in the shadow of Hollywood, at the American Film Institute and UCLA respectively. While Eraserhead was shot — almost entirely at night—in the attic of a Beverly Hills mansion that Lynch converted into a studio, Killer of Sheep was filmed under natural light in the streets, vacant lots, and houses of Watts.

It's a great article and I highly recommend tracking it down in full (it's possible to do so with a San Francisco Public Library card) either before or after viewing tonight's bill.

HOW: Both films screen on 35mm.