Ken Burns
Ken Burns (born 1953) is a highly celebrated American documentarian who gradually amassed a considerable reputation and a devoted audience with a series of reassuringly traditional meditations on Americana. Burns' works are treasure troves of archival materials; he skillfully utilizes period music and footage, photographs, periodicals and ordinary people's correspondence, the latter often movingly read by seasoned professional actors in a deliberate attempt to get away from a "Great Man" approach to history. Like most non-fiction filmmakers, Burns wears many hats on his projects, often serving as writer, cinematographer, editor and music director in addition to producing and directing. He achieved his apotheosis with The Civil War (1990), a phenomenally popular 11-hour documentary that won two Emmys and broke all previous ratings records for public TV. The series' companion coffee table book--priced at a hefty $50--sold more than 700,000 copies. The audio version, narrated by Burns, was also a major best-seller. In the final accounting, "The Civil War" became the first documentary to gross over $100 million. Not surprisingly, it has become perennial fund-raising programming for public TV stations around the country. Burns arrived upon the scene with the Oscar-nominated Brooklyn Bridge (1981), a nostalgic chronicle of the construction of the fabled edifice. The film was more widely seen when rebroadcast on PBS the following year. Though Burns has made other nonfiction films for theatrical release, notably an acclaimed and ambiguous portrait of Depression-era Louisiana governor Huey Long (1985), PBS would prove to be his true home. He cast a probing eye on such American subjects as The Statue of Liberty (1985), The Congress (1988) (PBS), painter Thomas Hart Benton (1988) (PBS) and early radio with Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991) (PBS). Burns returned to long-form documentary with his most ambitious project to date, an 18-hour history of Baseball (1994), which aired on PBS in the fall of 1994. He approached the national pastime as a template for understanding changes in modern American society. Ironically, this was the only baseball on the air at the time, as the players and owners were embroiled in a bitter strike.
Known for
In the Know
The American Buffalo
The U.S. and the Holocaust
Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness
Benjamin Franklin
The Unmaking of a College
Muhammad Ali
Back on the Record with Bob Costas
De la poussière et des hommes
Hemingway
Ken Burns: Here & There
Here For A Good Time
The Gene: An Intimate History
East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story
College Behind Bars
Country Music by Ken Burns
Very Ralph
Country Music
The Mayo Clinic
Firing Line with Margaret Hoover
The Vietnam War
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War
Jackie Robinson
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies
Interstellar
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History
The Address
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Yosemite — A Gathering of Spirit
The Dust Bowl
The Mindy Project
The Central Park Five
Finding Your Roots
Prohibition
Baseball: The Tenth Inning
The National Parks: America's Best Idea
MLB: Baseball's Seasons
The War
Craft in America
The Colbert Report
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip
Mark Twain
Jazz
Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens - A Life in Animation
Seeing, Searching, Being: William Segal
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
Frank Lloyd Wright
Lewis & Clark - The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
Thomas Jefferson
The West
The Daily Show
Baseball
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
Lindbergh
The Civil War
The Simpsons
Thomas Hart Benton
The Congress
The Statue of Liberty
Huey Long
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God
This Week
Brooklyn Bridge
CNN Special Report
60 Minutes
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Today
Acting
Directing
1999
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
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Writing
Production
1999
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
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