When It Rains
In this jazz-inspired short film, a self-described urban "griot" spends New Year's Day canvassing his neighborhood to scrape together enough rent money to keep a mother and daughter from losing their apartment. Featuring a cast and crew made up of director Charles Burnett's own circle of friends, this film recalls his earlier works in its South Central Los Angeles setting and outstanding music.
When It Rains takes an all-too-common social problem facing low-income families, the cycle of eviction and homelessness, and deftly transforms it into a celebratory lesson on the value of community.
Reviews
"One of my all-time favorite films, this beautiful 12-minute short by Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep, The Glass Shield), made for French TV in 1995, is a jazz parable about locating common roots in contemporary Watts and one of those rare movies in which jazz forms directly influence film narrative. The slender plot involves a Good Samaritan and local griot (Ayuko Babu), who serves as poetic narrator, trying to raise money from his neighbors in the ghetto for a young mother who's about to be evicted, and each person he goes to see registers like a separate solo in a 12-bar blues. (Eventually a John Handy album recorded in Monterey, a "countercultural" emblem of the 60s, becomes a crucial barter item.) This gem has been one of the most difficult of Burnett's films to see."
- Jonathan Rosenbaum at ChicagoReader.com
