Toy Sheep Microcinema: Killer of Sheep

Toy Sheep Microcinema, Awesome Space, the ASU English Department and the Appalachian Theatre present

Killer of Sheep

Thursday, February 5, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. / Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Free Admission – Open to the Public

This program is unrated but recommended for adults only.
All Seating is General Admission

KILLER OF SHEEP (Charles Burnett, USA), is a poetic portrait of 1970s family life in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles that is considered one of the great American films: the Library of Congress chose SHEEP for its National Film Registry in 1990, honoring its status as a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant movie,” while the National Society of Film Critics included SHEEP on its “100 Essential Films” list released in 2002. For this event, we are showcasing a new 4K restoration of the movie that, according to Darol Olu Kae, is a “revelation”: “Every dusty street, worn face, and tender moment is rendered with a depth and clarity that intensifies the film’s melancholic beauty.” This Film is Not Rated / Runtime: 80 minutes

KILLER OF SHEEP plays at 6:30pm (please note, NOT at our usual time of 8:30pm) on Thursday, February 5 in the main auditorium of the Appalachian Theatre at 559 West King Street, Boone. This event will be introduced by two ASU English professors, Michael Docherty (speaking about the L.A. Rebellion, the group of filmmakers—including Charles Burnett—who began as UCLA students and would later revolutionize the depiction of Black cultures in American cinema) and John Sanders (on resistance in KILLER OF SHEEP) This event is FREE and open to the public, and all Toy Sheep events are recommended for adults only.

In his four-star review of SHEEP, film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “The film centers on Stan, a slaughterhouse worker who labors to exhaustion at his work and then returns to jobs at home: fixing the sink, putting down new linoleum, raising the kids. In this he is joined by his wife, a beautiful but tired woman, who freshens her makeup to welcome him home, even though he can hardly notice. Burnett regards their faces, lives, children, friends, neighbors, in a loosely strung-together series of episodes that don’t add up to much, while they somehow add up to everything.”

Know Before You Go

For ADA, accessibility accommodations, ticket & venue questions please contact the AppTheatre Box Office at or by calling 828.865.3000 ext. 1 .

THIRD PARTY SELLERS / SECONDARY MARKET- Tickets for events at the Appalachian Theatre of the High Country are sold exclusively through the theatre box office and online at AppTheatre.org . We DO NOT partner with third party sellers. We DO NOT accept tickets sold on a secondary market. We reserve the right to decline entry if you are not the original ticket buyer.

Tickets purchased from alternative sources may be:

• Inauthentic or invalid (cannot be used to enter the event)

• Over-priced