Charles Burnett Movies

J.J. is a rookie in the Sheriff's Department and the first black officer at that station. Racial tensions run high in the department as some of...

An enigmatic drifter from the South comes to visit an old acquaintance who now lives in South-Central LA.

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

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.

An omnibus project bringing together acclaimed directors from around the world, each contributing a 42-second short inspired by a dream. Produced by...

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...

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...

An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.

After wrongly doing time in prison for murder, a man seeks revenge on a racist law enforcement system and the detective who framed him.

A Jamaican widower recently released from a mental institution and a former housewife with an imagined lover in the form of 19th-century composer...

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...

A young African-American man, living in Los Angeles without direction in his life, reluctantly agrees to be the best man for his brother, an upwardly...

Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.

With dreams of fame and fortune, Faith goes to Washington where she quickly discovers that the life of a budding starlet can be tougher than the...

Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) is engaged to marry talented white jazz musician Meade Howell, but the pair face opposition from both Meade's family, who...

Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation is a 2007 epic film on the Namibian independence struggle against South African occupation as seen through the...

Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, a collective of African American filmmakers, artists, and...

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...

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

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...