Charles Burnett

The Story of Film: An Odyssey

A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.

Hollywood Black

The epic story of the actors, writers, directors, and producers who fought for their place on the page, behind the camera and on the screen. From blackface to Black Panther, this series is a definitive chronicle of more than a century of the black experience in Hollywood and a powerful reexamination of a quintessentially American story – in brilliant color.

These Amazing Shadows

Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.

We Blew It

How did America change from Easy Rider into Donald Trump? What became of the dreams and utopias of the 1960's and 1970's? What do the people who lived in that golden age think about it today? Did they really blow it? Shot in Cinemascope - from New Jersey to California - this melancholic and elegiac road-movie draws upon the portrait of a confused, complex and incandescent America one year after the start of the electoral campaign. That golden age has become its last romantic border and an inconsolable America is about to pull on a trigger called Trump.

Is That Black Enough for You?!?

A look at the Black revolution in 1970s cinema, from genre films to social realism, from the making of new superstars to the craft of rising auteurs.

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property

In 1831, Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in the United States that resulted in the murder of local slave owners and their families, the eventual execution of 55 rebels and the retribution lynching of more than 200 innocent slaves. Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property examines how the story of Turner’s revolt has been interpreted throughout history and how it continues to raise new questions about the nature of terrorism and other forms of violent resistance to oppression. The film adopts an innovative structure by interspersing documentary footage and interviews with dramatizations of these different versions of Turner’s story. A unique collaboration between MacArthur Genius Award feature director Charles Burnett, acclaimed historian of slavery Kenneth S. Greenberg and Academy Award-nominated documentary producer Frank Christopher, Nat Turner is a compelling look at one of history’s most mysterious figures.

Charles Burnett : Le rebelle silencieux de Watts

Spirits of Rebellion: Black Cinema at UCLA

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 1990s.

Dreams Are Colder Than Death

Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, a collective of African American filmmakers, artists, and intellectuals reflect on the goals and ambitions of the civil rights movement and where things stand today.

A Walk with Charles Burnett

Filmmaker Robert Townsend executive-produced the following fifty-six-minute program for Criterion’s Meet the Filmmakers series in 2018. In it, he and Charles Burnett reflect on Burnett’s groundbreaking career in cinema, returning to South Central Los Angeles and the shooting locations of his landmark films Killer of Sheep and To Sleep with Anger.

Olivia's Story

A Little League baseball game becomes the unlikely context for this lyrical drama about memory and loss, told from the perspective of a Korean-American woman and her grandmother.