This week on the Reel Spirituaity Podcast, we are joined by Avril Speaks to begin a four part series focused on the Black Indepenedent Cinema Movement. If you missed Avril’s article campaigning for an alternative set of classics, we encourage you to read it now. Her article lays a good foundation for this series.
To begin, we watched Charles Burnett’s 1979 masterpeice, Killer of Sheep. The film has been compared to those in the Italian Neo-realism movement (like The Bicycle Thief, which we looked at last fall on the podcast). Killer of Sheep features a loosely connected narrative about a family living in South Central Los Angeles at the time the film was made.
The Black Independent Cinema Movement was a response to Blaxploitation. If you want to learn more about that genre and the films typical of it, we encourage you to check out Filmspotting’s recent marathon on the genre. (Reel Spirituality contributor Josh Larsen co-hosts Filmspotting.)
Future films in our series will include Daughters of the Dust, To Sleep With Anger, and Sankofa. We encourage you to watch the films ahead of time to maximize your enjoyment of the podcast. If you have anything you’d like to add to the discussion, contact us via email.
The theme music for our podcast is provided by Matt Lumpkin, aka Bendblock, whose music can be found here. If you are interested in subscribing to the Reel Spirituality podcast, follow this link.
