Connoisseurs of 1970s independent cinema will relish every moment of this brilliant low-budget 1977 feature from Charles Burnett. After many career frustrations, Burnett went on to make To Sleep With Anger in 1990, but this is surely his great film, a masterpiece of unforced, vernacular movie-making. With its gloriously free-wheeling cinematography, pungent improvised dialogue, distinctive ambient sound and dramatic scenes that appear to have been serendipitously discovered by Burnett's camera, this is a hidden gem that sparkles in the light. It loosely shows the life of a slaughterhouse worker called Stan, played by Henry G Sanders, in the toughest ghettos of Los Angeles. Poetic moments of stillness are captured; dramatic and absurd scenes are played out. The use of the animal carnage as metaphor arguably looks overdone now, but this is a treat.