Determined Mavericks

“I stuck a camera in the middle of the street and just shot people.”

Reflecting on his origins as a film maker to the Vancouver movie critic and journalist David Spaner, the African-American filmmaker Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, To Sleep with Anger) taps the very heart of the so-called “independent” movie-making spirit. Indeed, it is the spirit that gives Spaner’s book on the history of non-studio filmmaking its title—Shoot It! Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film—and that links Burnett with such other noteworthy do-it-yourself types as Orson Welles, Dennis Hopper, John Cassavetes, Jim Jarmusch, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Susan Seidelman, Miranda July, Nicole Holofcener and Catherine Breillat.

Burnett has not made a feature in quite some time. His fiercely independent spirit has ensured his marginalization in short films, TV movies and documentaries for most of his career, and this part of his story is as...