Ken

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Ken Burns is a celebrated filmmaker whose documentaries have had a profound influence on American culture and society over the past three decades.  Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.

The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, "More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source."  Widely regarded as one of the most influential documentary makers of all time, Ken has won ten Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September 2008, was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

SPEAKER TOPICS
ABOUT Ken Burns   (+/-)

Legendary Filmmaker Bringing History to Life

Ken Burns has been making films for over 30 years.  In that time, he has garnered countless awards, accolades and acclaim from critics, academics and audiences around the world.  Among his long list of notable achievements include the Public Television series Baseball, which covered the history of baseball from the 1840s to the present.  It became the most watched series in PBS history and received numerous awards, including an Emmy, the CINE Golden Eagle Award, the Clarion Award, and the Television Critics Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sports and Special Programming.  Prior to that, Ken created the landmark television series The Civil War, which was the highest rated series in the history of American Public Television and has been honored with more than forty major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, Producer of the Year Award from the Producer's Guild, People's Choice Award, Peabody Award, DuPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffiths Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others.

Multiple Award-Winner, Gifted Storyteller

Ken's most recently released work was the PBS-broadcast The War, which tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of nearly 40 men and women from four quintessentially American towns. The War was named an official selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and won three Primetime Emmy Awards including Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming.  In addition to his current national parks project, Ken is also working on a history of Prohibition and an update to his 1994 epic Baseball, both tentatively scheduled to be shown on PBS in 2010.

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SPEAKER TOPIC DESCRIPTIONS    (+/-)

The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Based on Ken's current work on the history of the national parks, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" focuses on the ideas and individuals that helped propel the parks into existence.  Ken shares his experiences over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales and the amazing people he encountered along the way.  It is a story of people from every conceivable background - rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so, reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy.

Visions of Race in America

Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns explores the themes of race and citizenship in America. The program features clips from several of Burns' films and a highly-interactive discussion with the audience including a question and answer session.

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