Celebrated filmmaker Charles Burnett returned to his alma mater on April 5 for a screening and discussion of his 2003 documentary, “Nat Tuner: A Troublesome Property.”
Co-sponsored by the Black Association of Documentary Filmmakers (BAD West) as part of AFRIQUE 360’s screening platform for African Diaspora filmmakers, the event drew a respectable crowd that did not quite fill UCLA’s 270-seat James Bridges Theater. During the course of his 30-plus-year career, Burnette has never broken into the elite echelon of mega-blockbuster directors like fellow Bruin alum Francis Ford Coppola (who was feted that same evening at another affair, in the same theater), but he has been lauded far and wide for his artistic vision. Among his achievements are “Killer of Sleep,” (1978), selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” and his winning the 1988 MacArthur “Genius Award.”
Another addition to these professional tributes was bestowed during the evening, when Burnett was gifted with a career achievement award by AFRIQUE 360 and BAD West.
While not as well known as “Killer of Sheep,” “Nat Turner: a Troublesome Property” is no less compelling, because it features scores of historians and scholars weighing in on this polarizing character from early Americana. Documentation on the details of this disgruntled slave-turned rabble-rouser-turned-insurrectionist is limited (a surviving wanted poster from this era describes him as having a “… rather bright complexion, but not a mulatto …”), but still cast an ominous cloud over Virginia ‘s Southampton County, where his 1831 rebellion took place.
The controversy surrounding Turner came to a head by 1967, when Virginia native William Styron novelized the tumultuous events inolving the former slave, under the title “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” fueled by the cultural upheaval transpiring in the United States at that time, and at the instigation of Styron’s close friend, novelist James Baldwin. The controversy generated by this 1968 Pulitzer Prize winner carries over to the 2003 documentary.
Over the years, Burnett’s “Troublesome Property” has generated its own share of criticism, paradoxically because of his attempt to project an even-handed portrait of the enigmatic mutineer; he allowed a plethora of Black and White viewpoints to expound on the ramifications of the man and his actions; the end result being a summation that satisfied no one.
While not directly mentioned as the celebration of Burnette progressed, the shadow of Sundance Film Festival sensation “Birth of a Nation” looms large in the psyche of the future of Black filmmaking. A fictionalized account of Turner’s slave rebellion (its title is a reworking of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent film about renegade “negroes,” and the birth of the Klu Klux Klan), this tale of violent retribution has been the subject of industry speculation for months. On the heels of its sensational screening at Sundance (winning the grand jury prize), and its record-breaking purchase by Fox Searchlight, its writer, director, and star Nate Parker has been announced as this year’s recipient of the Tribeca Film Award for Disruptive Innovation, to be presented on April 22.
After the screening, Burnett held a conversation with UCLA Public Events Manager Steven Foley, followed by a Q and A with the audience. During these exchanges, Burnett waxed at length about the process of compromise and conflict within the Hollywood system, and his development as a cinema student as part of the “L.A. Rebellion film movement” on the Westwood campus in the 1970s. Here and there, he inserted amusing antidotes about projects that never materialized, including a pitch for a movie on the life of Donald Goines, pioneer of the Blaxploitation paperback genre.
The evening’s festivities kicked off with a screening of the short film “10 Minutes” by Satie Gossett. A directorial debut by the son of Academy Award winner Louis Gossett Jr. This suspense-filled drama featuring Glenn Plummer, marks the emergence of a noteworthy standard bearer in the tradition of visual storytelling.
