Burnett ties his explorations of Southern influence to his family’s own Great Migration move. He recalls this hybridization and “mythical quality” of folk culture and superstition having an immense impact on his upbringing. During our conversation, Burnett shared a few lines of song, one from his youth that was brought to him by fellow Southerners who spoke of its connections to Africa.
“The South was always this mysterious place that had these strange habits and ways,” he says. “We thought it was a bit weird, particularly about voodoo and stuff like that. When we were kids, we didn’t want nothing to do with the South of the country or any of the old folkways—until you get older, and you realize that that’s somehow played a very important part in your growing up in life.”
As our conversation winds down, I ask Burnett what it has meant to him to make films about the lives of Black folks in Southern California. “I felt I was contributing. I was part of the solution,” Burnett says. “I grew up in the Civil Rights Movement, and there was this feeling that you had a responsibility to make improvements, to say something progressive and to be part of making positive change. It was Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the Panthers.”
“There was a lot of this dialogue about what films we should be making. What speaks to the Black community? Showing films in the community was the best thing. Pearl Bowser [early Black independent cinema archivist and programmer] had these programs that get Black independent films and screen them in the community… so we had a direct dialogue with people in the community telling us what they wanted, what was real and what was unreal and what were the kind of films they wanted to see.”
Bowser’s legacy as an early archivist and champion of Black independent cinema is being carried forth by the likes of Maya Cade with the Black Film Archive, just as the slow, realist cinema championed by Burnett has been propelled and interpolated by subsequent generations of filmmakers: Cauleen Smith. Ayoka Chenzira. Dee Rees. RaMell Ross. Savanah Leaf. Raven Jackson. Barry Jenkins, who Burnett mentions having spoken to on the phone “just the other day.”
This lineage of artists striving to honor the essence and expansiveness of Black life in their onscreen worlds will unfurl as far out as independent cinema will stretch. The beauty of independent cinema, and other low-budget DIY art forms, is that once a project is completed it will never not exist again. There are generations of fledgling filmmakers who have yet to discover the LA Rebellion and the work of Julie Dash, Alile Larkin, Charles Burnett. But when they encounter these projects, something alchemical will occur. Cinematic possibilities will emerge in their minds and tongues and pens. They will follow Burnett’s camera down railroad tracks and through meandering cement lots, they will bathe in appreciation of the ‘single day’s doldrums.’ With their films, the ones the world is waiting to see, they too will take flight.
