Unemployed, depressed and running out of options for supporting his wife and three children, Charlie Banks (Nate Hardman) is just barely eking out a living in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts in the early 1980s. His wife, Andais (Kaycee Moore), accuses him of irresponsibility, and even of cheating on her, an allegation that isn’t true until Charlie decides it may as well be. Charlie’s friends try their best to help him get by, but their well-intentioned plans don’t always pan out.

Billy Woodberry’s BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS (1983), written and shot by Charles Burnett and starring KILLER OF SHEEP’s Kaycee Moore, chronicles the devastating toll that joblessness takes on a married couple and their children. Added to the National Film Registry in 2013 and newly restored by Ross Lipman for the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with digital restoration by reKINO (Warsaw), the rarely shown feature is accompanied by Woodberry’s 1980 short THE POCKETBOOK, adapted from a Langston Hughes short story.