LA Rebellion

In the late 1960s and 1970s a group of Black and African students at UCLA, often called the L.A. Rebellion, set out to make films unlike Hollywood's images of Black life. Charles Burnett, Julie Dash and Haile Gerima, with others such as Billy Woodberry, Larry Clark, Ben Caldwell, Barbara McCullough and Zeinabu irene Davis, drew on Italian neorealism and on Third Cinema from Latin America and Africa. They shot on small budgets in Watts and other neighbourhoods, often with friends and neighbours. Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1978) became the movement's best-known work, and Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991) was a landmark for Black women directors.

Where

Los Angeles, especially UCLA and the neighbourhood of Watts

When

Late 1960s to the early 1990s

Key figures

Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima, Billy Woodberry, Larry Clark, Ben Caldwell, Alile Sharon Larkin, Barbara McCullough, Zeinabu irene Davis

Landmark films

Bush Mama (1975), Killer of Sheep (1978), Illusions (1982), To Sleep with Anger (1990), Daughters of the Dust (1991), Sankofa (1993)

Legacy

Opened the way for independent Black cinema in the United States and showed a different image of Black life on screen

What to look for

• Everyday life in Black neighbourhoods filmed with patience and little money
• Non-professional actors, real locations and a neorealist eye
• Political ideas from Third Cinema mixed with music, folk belief and poetry