A film US critics have hailed as one of the “100 essential films” of all time has been chosen as the Bermuda International Film Festival’s ‘June Film Series’ presentation.

‘Killer of Sheep’, which has been breaking art house cinema attendance records this spring in the US, will screen on Thursday, June 21 at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute. Tickets (BIFF Film Club members $8, non-members $10) can be reserved by e-mailing the Festival at info[AT]biff.bm.

Please specify the screening for which you are reserving tickets.

Director Charles Burnett’s film examines the black Los Angeles ghetto of Watts in the mid-1970s through the eyes of Stan, a sensitive dreamer who is growing detached and numb from the psychic toll of working at a slaughterhouse.

Frustrated by money problems, he finds respite in moments of simple beauty: the warmth of a coffee cup against his cheek, slow dancing with his wife in the living room, holding his daughter.

The film offers no solutions; it merely presents life — sometimes hauntingly bleak, sometimes filled with transcendent joy and gentle humour.

‘Killer of Sheep’ was shot on location in Watts over a series of weekends on a budget of less than $10,000.

Finished in 1977 and shown sporadically, its reputation grew until it won the FIPRESCI (International Critics’) Prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival.

Problems with music clearance meant that the film went unreleased theatrically until this Spring, but it has quickly become an art house cinema sensation, breaking the house record at IFC in New York.

The film was considered such a landmark of American independent and African-American cinema that it was one of the first 50 culturally-significant films to be selected for preservation in the Library of Congress by the National Film Registry. The National Society of Film Critics in the US selected it as one of the “100 Essential Films” of all time. Film critics have hailed the film, with Melissa Anderson of Time Out New York writing “Six Stars! Perfect!” and Dave Kehr of the New York Times writing: “A masterpiece. One of the most insightful and authentic dramas about African-American life on film. One of the finest American films, period.”

Nathan Lee of The Village Voice says: “The film of the season, if not the year, is a Southern California slice-of-life from 1977 that hasn’t aged a day... A stirring and sophisticated evocation of working-class Watts.”