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285 Chains of Ignorance Charles Burnett’s Nightjohn Words are freedom, old man. ’Cause that’s all that slavery’s made of: words. Laws, deeds, passes: all they are is words. White folks got all the words, and they mean to keep them. You get some words for yourself and you be free. —Nightjohn, a plantation slave I think a strong case can be made that Charles Burnett is the most gifted and important black filmmaker this country has ever had. But there’s a fair chance you’ve never heard of him because he isn’t a hustler, he’s never had a mainstream success, and all his work to date has been difficult to pigeonhole. Born in Mississippi in 1943, though raised from infancy in Los Angeles, he was one of several key black filmmakers—including Larry Clark, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima, and Billy Woodberry—to attend UCLA’s graduate film program in the 60s and 70s. His first film to circulate widely, the remarkable 1977 Killer of Sheep, won prizes in 1981 at Berlin and Sundance (before it was known as Sundance) and was one of the first titles selected for the Library of Congress’s Historic Film Registry. But it’s never been commercially available on video, and his affecting My Brother’s Wedding (1984) is equally difficult to come by. In 1988 Burnett received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, but he hasn’t become any sort of household name since, even after moving out of the independent sector. Neither his 1990 masterpiece To Sleep with Anger, which starred Danny Glover and played the art-house circuits, nor his honorable but unexceptional 1991 TV documentary about U.S. immigration, America Becoming, has had much of an impact on the public. Burnett himself blamed the meager promotional efforts of the Goldwyn Company , which produced To Sleep with Anger, for the lackluster reception it got in the black community. He probably had a point, though one could also argue that all of his first three features pose different versions of the same commercial dilemma: though they deal almost exclusively with the Los Angeles black community , they have few of the calling cards—apart from Glover’s presence in the third—most black viewers associate with an entertaining night at the movies. The problem is essentially stylistic: his first two features, both made independently, were inspired by the Italian neorealists and postneorealists (Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs was a particular favorite), which probably made his work 286 ESSENTIAL CINEMA more accessible to Europeans than to Americans. To Sleep with Anger, however, is so rooted in the experience of black American rural culture that it might well have bemused European viewers. At the same time, black viewers may have been put off by some of its art-movie characteristics, such as the film’s concentration on character over plot, its subtle dark humor, and its dense, literary structure. Great works, if they’re allowed time to sink in, have ways of finding and creating their own audiences, but To Sleep with Anger never had time to sink in. The consumption machine that devours and digests commercial releases weekly won’t slow down for works that take a little longer to be recognized and appreciated, and we all lost out in the process. The Glass Shield (1994)—in which Burnett ventured for the first time into a fictional world where white as well as black characters play important roles—was a lesser movie but a more substantial commercial release, escaping art-house distribution almost entirely. This time Burnett encountered a fresh set of problems, however, almost as if he were starting from scratch. Confronting the uncomfortable issues posed when a black rookie policeman (Michael Boatman) tries to fit in at an otherwise all-white L.A. precinct, Burnett’s script almost seemed to anticipate some of his own difficulties in dealing with the Hollywood system. Among other problems, he had to contend with Miramax test-marketing the movie and subsequently requiring him to alter the ending before the film could be released. Immediately afterward, Burnett made my favorite of all his films to date, the beautiful 12-minute When It Rains (1995), for French TV—a jazz parable about locatingcommonrootsincontemporaryWatts .It’soneofthoseraremoviesinwhich jazz forms directly influence film narrative. The slender plot involves a good Samaritan and local griot, who serves as poetic narrator (Ayuko Babu), trying to raise money from ghetto neighbors for a young...

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