Good news. E Street Cinema has decided to hold over their run of the restoration of Killer of Sheep, Charles Burnett's beautiful 1977 film about the Los Angeles slum Watts.

Part French New Wave, part verite documentary, it's a long way from your normal movie. It's a bleak and slow-paced. The budget was next to nothing. There isn't much of a plot. The main subject is poverty. Many of the actors were amateurs.

But at several moments its dream-like passages capture feelings of longing, tragedy and frustration with a power I've rarely seen in an American film.

They don't come in the emotional showdowns or tissy-fit histrionics required to draw attention in Hollywood today. Instead, this is a movie that sneaks up on you, its moments of clarity and beauty leaping up out of the gravel to catch your eye.

In its own silent way, the scene where our protagonists, a husband (Henry Sanders) and his lonely wife (Kaycee Sanders), ebb to and fro with Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth" is a quiet, romantic tour de force with more movement and punch than eight hours of opera.

And you'll probably never have a chance to see it on the big screen again.

This is a post Ben Welsh made on June 14, 2007

It is filed with other posts about celebrations and movies.

Topics include black and white movies, black cinema, charles burnett, dinah washington, e street cinema, killer of sheep, los angeles, movies, my life, this bitter earth, washington dc and watts.

Some similar posts are "The New War Correspondent: G.I. Joe," "Hello, Los Angeles," "LA is much different from DC," "This is TV, stupid" and "More Many Eyes"