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...

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...

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...

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

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

This critically acclaimed 1973 short is about an aristocratic white farming family who has a horse that is being put away, by the father of a young...

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

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 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...

An improvised late '60s short-subject student film, and debut movie of Charles Burnett, done in the neo-realist, documentary film style. A...

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...

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

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

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

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...

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

This charming tale focuses on Willa Ledbetter, an African American middle-aged school teacher in Watts, and her longing to visit her parent's...