#3. Killer of Sheep

Completed in 1977 and virtually unseen since, Charles Burnett's poetic document of family life in a Los Angeles ghetto finally got a decent release, and is now out on DVD. In sympathetic, unsentimental vignettes, we meet a slaughterhouse worker (Henry Gayle Sanders), his wife (Kaycee Jones) and two kids. As the children play games in the post-apocalyptic rubble of Watts, the man's emotional exhaustion abrades against the woman's sexual yearning. This is surely the finest, most uncompromising film by a black director. More than that, it's an aching testament to the persistence of dreams amid desolation.