Charles Burnett Movies

John is a man of many talents, including one forbidden skill: he can read. When he teaches a young slave girl named Sarny to read and write, she...

Director Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, My Brother's Wedding, To Sleep with Anger) presents a tale about a young boy's encounter with his family...

Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.

A teenage boy leaves a moment of boredom while his father works on his old car, and the mother wishes to go out for a stroll around the block. One...

Jason Ross is an 11-year-old boy whose love for baseball exceeds his talent for the game. When cut from his little league team, Jason's undefeatable...

A woman in a Hollywood dubbing studio struggles with race and preconceptions. The short film depicts the life of an African American woman passing...

Filmmaker Robert Townsend executive-produced the following fifty-six-minute program for Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series in 2018. In it,...

Tells the poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the...

Sa-I-Gu, literally translated in Korean as April 29, is the day of the 1992 Los Angeles riots or uprising. Three months after the events, the...

Part of a multi-platform project highlighted by an hour long documentary about black filmmakers who worked and studied at UCLA between 1965 and the...

An African American woman living away from her family in Los Angeles yearns to be recognized for more than her physical attributes. In cultivating...

Filmmaker Thomas Penick explores race, gender and violence in this provocative, disturbing drama set on a hot, summer day in 1969. When a woman...

A single mother ekes out a living from welfare check to welfare check, struggling to provide for her daughter.

In the course of a botched purse-snatching, a boy comes to question the path of his life. Billy Woodberry’s second film, and first completed in...

This video work intermingles fiction with actuality in a poignant confrontation with homelessness.

Looks at the United States as it becomes an increasingly diverse nation. Tracing the history of significant changes in the Immigration and...

Dorothy is a poor black woman. Her husband is put in jail for no observable reason, and she is pregnant with a second child. The government threatens...