Charles Burnett was born on April 13, 1944, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and later moved with his family to the Watts area of Los Angeles at a young age.
He developed a strong connection to the South through the community's robust mythical connection with the region, which has greatly influenced his work.
Burnett earned his Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from UCLA, where he was influenced by professors Elyseo Taylor and Basil Wright, and became friends with fellow future greats like Haile Gerima and Julie Dash.
He cites Jean Renoir, Satyajit Ray, and Sidney Lumet as important influences on his work.
In 1988, Burnett received the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, which allowed him to support his family and focus on his new script.
With Danny Glover's success in Lethal Weapon, they secured funding for Burnett's film To Sleep With Anger, which won several awards, including Best Director and Best Screenplay for Burnett, and Best Actor for Glover.
The Library of Congress selected Killer of Sheep and To Sleep With Anger for the National Film Registry, and the National Society of Film Critics honored Burnett for best screenplay.
Burnett's work was also recognized by the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, the Sundance Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
In 1997, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival honored Burnett with a retrospective, Witnessing For Everyday Heroes.
He has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the J. P. Getty Foundation, and has won several awards, including the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award and the Paul Robeson Award for achievement in cinema.
The Chicago Tribune has called him "one of America's very best filmmakers," and the New York Times has named him "the nation's least known great filmmaker and most gifted black director."
Burnett has even had a day named after him - the mayor of Seattle declared February 20, 1997, as Charles Burnett Day.
He directed a documentary on Nat Turner and one chapter of the six-part documentary, The Blues, and in November 2017, he received an Academy Award for his life's work.
His latest film is entitled "The Power To Heal," a documentary about the integration of hospitals during the Civil Rights Era.
