The Annihilation of Fish
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Director: Charles Burnett Run Time: 108 min. Format: 4K Digital Release Year: 1999
Starring: Andy Garza, James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave, Margot Kidder, Sarah Benoit
Screenwriter: Anthony C. Winkler
Producers: Paul M. Heller, William Fabrizio, John Remark, Eric Mitchell
Winner of an Honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, Charles Burnett remains one of our country’s most celebrated independent filmmakers. In his charming The Annihilation of Fish, Lynn Redgrave plays Poinsettia, a former housewife with an imagined lover in the form of 19th-century composer Giacomo Puccini. She moves into a Los Angeles boarding house with an energetic landlady (Margot Kidder). There she meets a Jamaican widower, Fish (James Earl Jones), who has recently been released from a mental institution despite his continued battles against unseen demons. In the face of personal challenges and differences, the couple grows together and begins to discover new things about themselves and the nuances of love and happiness.
Shot in 1999, The Annihilation of Fish screened that September at the Toronto International Film Festival and was acquired for distribution. But following a single bad review in Variety, the distributor canceled the film’s release. For almost a quarter of a century, The Annihilation of Fish has been unavailable on all media — it has never been distributed on 35mm, DCP, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, television, or streaming — anywhere.
The restoration is by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation of the acclaimed independent filmmaker’s missing movie.