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February 2007, Week 4

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Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:51:17 EST
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Dear Screen-L members,

Milestone Films is delighted to announce that on the 30th anniversary of its 
completion, Charles Burnett's great African-American classic KILLER OF SHEEP 
has been beautifully restored to 35mm and is finally finding commercial release 
around the world! The film was one of the first named to the Library of 
Congress's National Film Registry and was chosen as one of The A List: The National 
Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films. We have spent the last six 
years researching and clearing the music rights to the array of songs featured in 
the film's soundtrack and are very proud to introduce audiences to this 
powerful and poetic depiction of everyday working-class family life.

“KILLER OF SHEEP represents the highest example of contemporary black 
American life put on screen because of Burnett's integrity to view it purely, without 
typical corrupted Hollywood devices.”  
- Armond White, Film Comment

You can join our effort and bring this amazing film to your institution, and 
at the same time help us defray the sky-high cost of those music clearances. 
We are now offering KILLER OF SHEEP for institutional DVD sale to cultural and 
educational institutions with public performance rights for $300. The public 
performance rights are in effect immediately in most places, in others right 
after the film plays in your local theater. Also, if you purchase the 
institutional DVD, we will automatically ship you at no cost the deluxe home DVD box set 
-- including KILLER OF SHEEP, Burnett's second feature, MY BROTHER'S WEDDING 
and three of his short films -- when it comes out in the fall.

More information can be found below and be sure to visit our website at 
www.killerofsheep.com and watch the trailer!

Dennis Doros, Amy Heller, Nadja Tennstedt, Victor Vazquez
Milestone Film & Video / PO Box 128 / Harrington Park, NJ 07640
Phone: (800) 603-1104 or (201) 767-3117 / Fax: (201) 767-3035
Email: [log in to unmask]      Website: www.milestonefilms.com

STEVEN SODERBERGH AND MILESTONE FILMS
PRESENT
CHARLES BURNETT'S
KILLER OF SHEEP

THE GREAT AFRICAN-AMERICAN CLASSIC FILM NEWLY RESTORED TO 35MM

Steven Soderbergh and Milestone Films are pleased to announce the first-ever 
popular release of Charles Burnett's critically acclaimed film KILLER OF SHEEP
, restored in glorious 35mm film by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  
Despite winning the Berlin International Film Festival Critics' Award and being 
named a national treasure by the Library of Congress, the film never saw 
distribution due to problems clearing the music rights for the songs featured in its 
beautiful soundtrack (Dinah Washington, Etta James, Paul Robeson, etc.). When 
it was shown at rare festival and museum screenings it was projected on old, 
damaged 16mm prints. Now, thirty years later, KILLER OF SHEEP is restored and 
available to be shown in classrooms and theaters worldwide.

KILLER OF SHEEP premiered in February 2007 at the Berlin Film Festival and is 
opening in New York at the IFC Center March 30, at the Nuart Theatre in LA on 
April 6, at San Francisco's Castro Theatre May 18 and at the E Street Cinema 
in DC on June 1, with many more markets and bookings to come.

If you are interested in screening KILLER OF SHEEP in 35mm or in video, 
please contact Amy Heller at 800-603-1104 or 201-767-3117 or via email at 
[log in to unmask] or at [log in to unmask]

SOME BACKGROUND ON THE FILM

KILLER OF SHEEP was originally submitted as Burnett's thesis at UCLA in 
1977.  It was made over roughly a year's worth of weekends on a shoestring budget 
of under $10,000.  Shot on location with a mostly amateur cast, with much 
handheld camera work, an episodic narrative and a gritty documentary-style 
cinematography, Killer of Sheep has been compared by film critics and scholars to 
Italian neorealist films like Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief and Roberto 
Rossellini's Paisan. However, Burnett cites Basil Wright's Songs of Ceylon and 
Night Mail and Jean Renoir's The Southerner as his main influences.

The film examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s 
through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb 
from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse. Frustrated by money 
problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a teacup 
against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife to the radio, holding his daughter. 
The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life - sometimes hauntingly 
bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humor.

CRITICS AND SCHOLARS SPEAK ON THE FILM

“KILLER OF SHEEP is one of the most striking debuts in movie history and an 
acknowledged landmark in African-American film.” - Terrence Rafferty, GQ

“Like Renoir, Ozu, Altman, Leigh-like Chekov-Burnett presents his characters 
in the round, justifying themselves to themselves… What the Italian 
neorealists accomplished in the years after World War II… Burnett-a one man 
African-American New Wave-achieved with [KILLER OF SHEEP]: he gave a culture, a people, a 
nation new images of themselves.” - Nelson Kim, Senses of Cinema

“[KILLER OF SHEEP] is formally one of the most interesting narrative films 
ever, since it suggests that poverty deprives people of a third act.  If it were 
an Italian film from 1953, we would have every scene memorized.” - Michael 
Tolkin

“The film at once recalls the episodic nature of John Cassavetes's earlier 
works, primarily Shadows and his masterpiece Faces, the plaintive allegory of 
Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar and the humanist works of Jean Renoir. 
Despite these influences, the film's sad yet proud vision of black life in the 
ghetto is distinctly Burnett's own.” - Ed Gonzalez, Slant



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