Highly acclaimed, award-winning African-American independent filmmaker whose "Killer of Sheep" (made in 1973, first shown 1977) about the emotional and behavioral effects of his job on a Los Angeles slaughter-house worker, won multiple awards and, although it never received commercial release, was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Completed on a budget of less than $1.5 million Burnett's first theatrical release, "To Sleep With Anger", concerning a tightly-knit middle-class black family in Los Angeles that begins to unravel when a long-absent relative (Danny