Part of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema & Changing the Picture (2013)
Sunday, February 24, 2013, 6:00 p.m.

Sponsored by Time Warner Inc.

Dir. Billy Woodberry. 1984, 84 mins. 35mm. With Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore. Bless Their Little Hearts represents the pinnacle of a neorealist strand within L.A. Rebellion that began with Charles Burnett’s Several Friends (1969). Woodberry’s film chronicles the devastating effects of underemployment on a family in the same L.A. community depicted in Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977). Hardman and Moore deliver gut-wrenching performances as the couple whose family is torn apart by events beyond their control. If salvation remains, it is in the sensitive depiction of everyday life, which persists throughout.
Preservation funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Packard Humanities Institute.

Preceded by:
The Pocketbook
Dir. Billy Woodberry. 1980, 13 mins. 35mm. With Ella “Simi” Nelson, Ray Cherry. In the course of a botched purse-snatching, a boy questions the path of his life. Woodberry’s second film adapts Langston Hughes’s short story “Thank You, Ma’am,” and features music by Leadbelly, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis.
Preservation funded in part by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

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