Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett

Born: April 13, 1944
in Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA
Charles Burnett is an American film director, producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer. His most popular films include Killer of Sheep (1977), My Brother’s Wedding (1983), To Sleep with Anger (1990), The Glass Shield (1994), and Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (2007). He has been involved in other types of motion pictures including shorts, documentaries, and a TV series.

Considered by the Chicago Tribune as “one of America’s very best filmmakers”, and by the New York Times as “the nation’s least-known great filmmaker and most gifted black director”, Charles Burnett has had a long and diverse filmmaking career.

Movies for Charles Burnett...

Is That Black Enough for You?!?
Title: Is That Black Enough for You?!?
Character: Self
Released: October 9, 2022
Type: Movie
A look at the Black revolution in 1970s cinema, from genre films to social realism, from the making of new superstars to the craft of rising auteurs.
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Charles Burnett and the L.A. rebellion (from Watts to Watts)
Title: Charles Burnett and the L.A. rebellion (from Watts to Watts)
Character: lui-même
Released: March 20, 2022
Type: Movie
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A Walk with Charles Burnett
Title: A Walk with Charles Burnett
Character: Self
Released: February 27, 2019
Type: Movie
Filmmaker Robert Townsend executive-produced the following fifty-six-minute program for Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series in 2018. In it, he and Charles Burnett reflect on Burnett’s groundbreaking career in cinema, returning to South Central Los Angeles and the shooting locations of his landmark films Killer of Sheep and To Sleep with Anger.
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We Blew It
Title: We Blew It
Character: Self
Released: November 8, 2017
Type: Movie
How did America change from Easy Rider into Donald Trump? What became of the dreams and utopias of the 1960's and 1970's? What do the people who lived in that golden age think about it today? Did they really blow it? Shot in Cinemascope - from New Jersey to California - this melancholic and elegiac road-movie draws upon the portrait of a confused, complex and incandescent America one year after the start of the electoral campaign. That golden age has become its last romantic border and an inconsolable America is about to pull on a trigger called Trump.
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Dreams Are Colder Than Death
Title: Dreams Are Colder Than Death
Released: June 7, 2014
Type: Movie
What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.
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Title: The Story of Film: An Odyssey
Character: Self
Released: September 3, 2011
Type: TV
A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.
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These Amazing Shadows
Title: These Amazing Shadows
Character: Self
Released: January 22, 2011
Type: Movie
Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.
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Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property
Title: Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property
Character: Lucinda
Released: February 16, 2003
Type: Movie
In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in the United States that resulted in the murder of local slave owners and their families, the eventual execution of 55 rebels and the retribution lynching of more than 200 innocent slaves. Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property examines how the story of Turner’s revolt has been interpreted throughout history and how it continues to raise new questions about the nature of terrorism and other forms of violent resistance to oppression. The film adopts an innovative structure by interspersing documentary footage and interviews with dramatizations of these different versions of Turner’s story. 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 is a compelling look at one of history’s most mysterious figures.
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Olivia's Story
Title: Olivia's Story
Character: Umpire
Released: February 17, 2000
Type: Movie
A Little League baseball game becomes the unlikely context for this lyrical drama about memory and loss, told from the perspective of a Korean-American woman and her grandmother.