In From the Wilderness At Last

Movie executives weren't wooing black filmmakers when Charles Burnett ( graduated from UCLA's film school in 1974. And Charles Lane didn't get many offers when he graduated from the film program at the State University of New York College at Purchase in 1980. But that didn't stop either man from making movies. Lane went on to win a student Academy Award for best short in 1976 for A Place in Time, a 36-minute experimental film about a street artist; 13 years later, he revived that film's Chaplinesque hero in Sidewalk Stories, a silent feature that won the Prix du Publique Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Burnett's first feature, Killer of Sheep, about a man who works in a slaughterhouse, was one of the first 50 films archived in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry.

Until recently, however, neither director had much visibility outside film- festival circles. Burnett, who supported his family and his film projects with foundation grants and odd jobs, couldn't even find a commercial distributor for his work. Now both are beginning to shake off the hothouse stigma. Lane, 37, is making his big-budget debut in August with True Identity, a $16 million comedy about a black man forced to pass for white in order to evade Mafia hit men. Although he had to ask for changes that would make the movie less offensive to blacks, Lane admits he was thrilled when Disney's Touchstone Pictures offered him the script. Says he: "I had been working in film since 1969, so it was a long time coming."

Burnett, 47, appeared to get his big break last fall when the Samuel Goldwyn Co. released To Sleep with Anger, starring Danny Glover, a gentle modern-day folktale about a black Los Angeles family's struggle to reconcile the desire for upward mobility with the traditions of their Southern past. "Today there is so much killing on the movie screens, and it prepares people to accept that kind of thing," says Burnett. "I want to show a sense of tradition and folklore and how important they are to survival."

Critics loved To Sleep with Anger, but there was little enthusiasm at the box office. Ironically, the film did better at art houses in predominantly white neighborhoods than in theaters in black neighborhoods. Burnett says Goldwyn's limited advertising budget shortchanged the black community. He vows, however, to continue making intellectually challenging films. "I don't want to seem pretentious," he says, "but I think for society to progress, you have to add something."