Killer of Sheep
1977 film by Charles Burnett
Killer of Sheep is a 1978 American drama film edited, filmed, written, produced, and directed by Charles Burnett. Shot primarily in 1972 and 1973, it was originally submitted by Burnett to the UCLA School of Film in 1977 as his Master of Fine Arts thesis.
The film depicts the daily life of Stan, a weary slaughterhouse worker struggling to maintain his humanity while providing for his family amidst the poverty of 1970s Watts. Rather than following a traditional linear plot, Killer of Sheep is composed of a series of vignettes that capture the rhythms of working-class life, childhood innocence, and the systemic frustrations of the urban environment. Critic Dana Stevens described its plot as "a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film."
Shot in black and white, the film's style is often likened to Italian neorealism. There are no acts, plot arcs or character development, as conventionally defined. The cast consists mainly of non-professional performers, including many children.
The film offers a vision of Watts of the early 1970s that is quite different from the Watts of several decades later. Filmed at the tail end of the Great Migration of blacks fleeing the South, most of the characters were either born in the South or their parents were (Burnett himself was born in Mississippi). Multiple references to Southern culture are made in the film.
The public source identifies “Killer of Sheep” as 1977 film by Charles Burnett. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Killer, Sheep and film.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1752684. VIAF identifies the subject as 189789002. The Library of Congress control number is no2020036468. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1972, 1973 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killer of Sheep” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.