{"id":633544,"date":"2026-10-17T15:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T15:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/633544\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T15:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T15:16:08","slug":"sometimes-its-not-perfect-but-it-works-film-maker-charles-burnett-on-his-chronicling-of-black-working-class-life-black-us-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/633544\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sometimes it\u2019s not perfect, but it works\u2019: film-maker Charles Burnett on his chronicling of Black working-class life | Black US culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Burnett had a dilemma. He had agreed to attend the wedding of a co-worker, but the wedding was scheduled for the same day and time as a funeral for a childhood friend.<\/p>\n

Initially, the film-maker \u2013 a landmark chronicler of Black working-class lives \u2013 decided he\u2019d go to the funeral. But when he tried to break the news to the co-worker, she was so dejected that he couldn\u2019t go through with it. He tried asking the bride to change the wedding \u2013 which was \u201cridiculous to think of trying to do\u201d, he says decades later \u2013 but that didn\u2019t work either. He decided he\u2019d go to both events.<\/p>\n

But when the day came, he got trapped at the wedding. He \u201csuffered through that\u201d and, in the process, missed the funeral.<\/p>\n

This dilemma is at the heart of My Brother\u2019s Wedding, Burnett\u2019s tragicomic 1983 film. Like Burnett, character Pierce Mundy has committed to going to a wedding when a childhood friend suddenly dies. Like Burnett, Pierce feels an obligation to be at both places, though the wedding and funeral were scheduled for the same time. Like Burnett, Pierce even, unsuccessfully, tries to change the wedding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was the fact that if you want to be someone\u2019s brother\u2019s keeper, you have to have principles and you have to be mature enough to make decisions and say, yes or no,\u201d Burnett says. \u201cYou may have good thoughts and be a decent person, but you have to have more than that. If you\u2019re going to be responsible for someone, you have to have a certain amount of maturity. It means making just decisions, proper decisions in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everette Silas (as Pierce Mundy) and Jessie Holmes (his mother, Mrs Mundy) in Charles Burnett\u2019s 1983 film My Brother\u2019s Wedding. Photograph: A film by Charles Burnett\/Milestone Films<\/p>\n

My Brother\u2019s Wedding was beset with production problems that limited the film\u2019s release. The main actor disappeared from set after demanding more pay (when Burnett tracked the actor down, he had reinvented himself as a pastor).<\/p>\n

In post-production, a German broadcaster asked Burnett for a finished cut of the film. He rushed through a rough cut, which the production company accepted as the final cut against his wishes. That longer, unfinished version of the film was shown to mixed reviews at the New Directors\/NewFilms festival in New York City in 1983, and was essentially impossible to view for many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would have been better just to say, start all over again,\u201d Burnett said. \u201cThe days were gone by that time. Rather than re-edit the film, I had to make terms with the material I had. That\u2019s what film-making is about. You run into all these problems, and in each one, you have a whole set of different problems. Sometimes it\u2019s not perfect, but it works, it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 82, Burnett, once called \u201cthe nation\u2019s least-known great film-maker\u201d by the New York Times, is enjoying a resurgence of interest in and celebration of his career. In 2025, his 1978 debut film Killer of Sheep<\/a>, considered a masterpiece, was restored, introducing the director and his oeuvre to newer audiences. And this year, after several decades, My Brother\u2019s Wedding, the director\u2019s sophomore film, was digitally restored and remastered by Milestone Films, the largest Black-owned film distributor in the US, UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, and Kino Lorber.<\/p>\n

Burnett supervised the restoration of My Brother\u2019s Keeper in consultation with Maya S Cade, president of Milestone Films, and Jillian Borders, head of preservation at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The restored film has enjoyed sold-out screenings at New York\u2019s Film Forum, is being shown at theatres across the country and is available to stream on the Criterion Channel. The film is also slated to be screened across the United Kingdom and Europe later this year.<\/p>\n

On the set of My Brother\u2019s Wedding. Photograph: Charles Burnett Archive<\/p>\n

Cade said that the restorations of both films \u201cfeel like resurrections\u201d. Both Burnett\u2019s debut and sophomore films are, decades after their initial release, able to be presented as originally intended. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to use the tools available to ensure that Charles\u2019s vision lasts not only our lifetimes, but many other lifetimes to come,\u201d Cade said. \u201cThe goal of restoration is to use every tool in our arsenal to make the song that you may be familiar with, if you will, sing anew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cade, who also runs Black Film Archive<\/a>, an online database of Black films made between 1898 and 1999, has been Burnett\u2019s archivist for more than one and a half years. Recently, while sorting through his materials, she uncovered never-before-seen images made on the set of My Brother\u2019s Keeper. The images, printed here, are raw and intimate. They\u2019re testaments, Cade said, to the number of people required to make a film and \u201cits own kind of archival repair\u201d.<\/p>\n

They are also ways for the non-professional actors and everyday people who participated in the making of the film to be honored. For Burnett, the restorations and the images allow him to reminisce about his experiences with old friends, many of whom are now dead. It\u2019s both a painful and joyous experience for the auteur. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to see them again,\u201d he said. \u201cI do appreciate what they\u2019ve done because most of the independent films I made were done with non-actors, and I\u2019m always so guilty about not having the money to pay them. But I\u2019m glad [about] the restoration because I\u2019m sure they see it and they can see it again in a positive way. It looks good and it\u2019s their story.\u201d<\/p>\n

On set of My Brother\u2019s Wedding. Photograph: Charles Burnett Archive<\/p>\n

Burnett wrote, directed and produced My Brother\u2019s Wedding on location in south central Los Angeles, where he grew up. His realism frankly depicts Black life in LA, using non-professional actors who, like the director, are firmly rooted in a time and place. In his original treatment for the film, Burnett wrote that \u201cthe story communicates to all persons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making the film allowed Burnett to explore his feelings about class differences that he saw and experienced while growing up in Watts, a neighborhood in south LA. In the film, Pierce\u2019s brother, Wendell, is engaged to Sonia, an upper-middle-class woman whose \u201csweetness\u201d, Pierce thinks, is \u201cabout as fake as a $3 bill\u201d.<\/p>\n

In one scene, Wendell and Sonia\u2019s families share dinner together. Sonia\u2019s family\u2019s wealth is on display \u2013 \u201csignifying\u201d, Pierce calls it, elsewhere in the film \u2013 from their fine wine to a maid who serves the family dinner. Pierce, who \u201chas a romantic view of the \u2018have-nots\u2019\u201d, is over it.<\/p>\n

He lists various jobs he\u2019s held, from driving a cement truck, working as a brakeman at the railroad and driving explosives and \u201call sorts of dangerous materials\u201d. Pierce\u2019s mother says that she wishes her sons were a doctor and lawyer, like Sonia\u2019s parents\u2019 children, instead. The scene culminates in a fiery exchange between Pierce, Wendell and Sonia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were growing up in LA, there was this class difference. We had this romantic notion about the poor and the middle class,\u201d Burnett says. He said that class limited the opportunities available to lower-income people in his community.<\/p>\n

Burnett, who was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, said there was a \u201cporch life\u201d, when he was growing up, where people talked and told stories about their lives in the south. Like him, most of his neighbors were southerners \u2013 from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas \u2013 who moved to California.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandmother and mother and them would always be talking about their experiences in Mississippi,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were from Natchez and Vicksburg \u2026 It was this vision of the south. It was so mystical, in a way, because of the way they told it and their relationships with people \u2026 It was like this story of this place that had this magical quality about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his films, Burnett maintains this culture of storytelling, and an intrinsic understanding of the importance of the mundane, translating it to the screen. The characters in My Brother\u2019s Wedding are just people. They have wants and desires; they are not caricatures of good or evil, even if they are in conflict with each other. The film\u2019s humor is found in the simple moments, much like it is in real life.<\/p>\n

On the set of My Brother\u2019s Wedding. Photograph: Charles Burnett Archive<\/p>\n

Much of the film follows Pierce as he lives his life. Burnett\u2019s decision to focus on a narrative about a young Black man and his experiences in south central LA was revolutionary. Pierce isn\u2019t a larger-than-life character from a Blaxploitation film, nor is he a caricature. He is just a young man with a difficult decision.<\/p>\n

Burnett was a central figure in the LA Rebellion film movement, in which several Black film-makers, including Julie Dash, Haile Gerima and others, rejected Hollywood norms and instead prioritized realism and a focus on Black life. \u201cThe whole idea was telling stories about Black experience,\u201d Burnett said. The directors were pushing back against racist films that shaped American cinema, like DW Griffith\u2019s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation<\/a>, which led to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and anti-Black violence. \u201c[In the] LA Rebellion, we\u2019re responding to the negative images of Hollywood, particularly Birth of a Nation and things like that, that really destroy who we are \u2026 We were fighting against those negative images and Blackface and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth considering how Burnett\u2019s career might have developed differently had his sophomore film received the distribution it deserved. His first film inspired generations of artists, such as Ava DuVernay, Sean Baker, Yasiin Bey and Barry Jenkins. Though his career was not allowed to flourish as it should have, in many ways, Burnett is responsible for generations of film-makers, though he speaks about himself and his career with a humbleness that doesn\u2019t hint at the weight of his impact. Arthur Jafa and Dash, both of whom would go on to shape cinema in their own right, first met while working as assistants on My Brother\u2019s Wedding. Jafa was first assistant camera, on his first-ever film set, while Dash was first assistant director. Years ago, while he was casting for a professional acting crew, Burnett said that he ran into many older Black actors. When they walked into the room, he asked, \u201cWhere have you been?\u201d<\/p>\n

Everette Silas (as Pierce Mundy) and Dennis Kemper (as Mr Mundy) in My Brother\u2019s Wedding. Photograph: A film by Charles Burnett\/Milestone Films<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a dumb question to ask, because you know where they\u2019ve been,\u201d he said. \u201cNot given an opportunity to express themselves [even though they] are so talented. That was one of the most difficult experiences, realizing this wasted talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, in some cases, their stories are preserved in the archives. They\u2019re in photos, like the ones from the set of My Brother\u2019s Wedding, or in other documents Cade has found in Burnett\u2019s archive.<\/p>\n

Burnett was always focused on telling stories, on being a director \u2013 he eschewed any notion that he himself was or should be a brand. And yet, he subconsciously created an archive, allowing himself and others to step back in time and appreciate the largely under-sung work he and other Black artists did for American cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Burnett had a dilemma. He had agreed to attend the wedding of a co-worker, but the wedding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-633544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}