Portal:Ken Burns
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker, known for his style of using archival footage and photographs in documentary films. His widely known documentary series include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), and The Vietnam War (2017). He was also executive producer of both The West (1996, directed by Stephen Ives), and Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015, directed by Barak Goodman).
Burns' documentaries have earned two Academy Award nominations (each for 1981's Brooklyn Bridge and 1985's Statue Of Liberty) and have won several Emmy Awards, among other honors.
Selected general articles
- Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery is a 1997 documentary film about the Lewis and Clark Expedition directed and co-produced by Ken Burns. The film, produced by Burns' Florentine Films for Washington, DC PBS station WETA-TV, first aired on PBS on November 4 and 5, 1997.
Part 1 of the film covers the expedition up to the headwaters of the Missouri River. Part 2 covers the meeting with the Shoshone, the treacherous crossing of the mountains, the downstream rush to reach the Pacific Ocean, and the ambitious explorations of the return trip. Read more... - The Central Park Five is a 2012 documentary film about the Central Park jogger case, directed by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband David McMahon. It was released in the US on November 23, 2012. Read more...
- Thomas Jefferson is a 1997 two-part American documentary film directed and produced by Ken Burns. It covers the life and times of Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President of the United States.
In the film Jefferson is portrayed as renaissance man. Not only was he a dedicated public servant, but was also a writer, an inventor, and a noted architect. Burns captures both the public and private person. Read more...
Ric Burns (left) with Brian Keane (1995)
Ric Burns (born 1955) is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey C. Ward. Read more...- Prohibition is a 2011 documentary film for television directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick with narration by Peter Coyote. The series originally aired between October 2, 2011 and October 4, 2011. It draws heavily from the 2010 book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent. Read more...
- The Ken Burns effect is a type of panning and zooming effect used in video production from still imagery.
The name derives from extensive use of the technique by American documentarian Ken Burns. The technique, previously known as "animatics", predates his use of it, but his name has become associated with the effect in much the same way as Alfred Hitchcock is associated with the dolly zoom. Read more... - Jazz is a 2001 documentary miniseries, directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001, and was released on DVD and VHS on January 2, 2001 by the same company. Its chronological and thematic episodes provided a history of jazz, emphasizing innovative composers and musicians and American history. Swing musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are the central figures. Several episodes discussed the later contributions of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to bebop, and of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane to free and cool jazz. Nine episodes surveyed forty-five years (1917–1961), leaving the final episode to cover forty years (1961–2001). The series was produced by Florentine Films in cooperation with the BBC and in association with WETA-TV, Washington. Read more...
- The War is a seven-part American documentary television mini-series about World War II from the perspective of the United States. The program was produced by American filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, written by Geoffrey Ward, and narrated primarily by Keith David. It premiered on September 23, 2007. The world premiere of the series took place at the Palace Theater in Luverne, Minnesota, one of the towns featured in the documentary. Read more...
- The West, sometimes marketed as Ken Burns Presents: The West, is a 1996 television documentary miniseries about the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives and featured Ken Burns as executive producer. It was first broadcast on PBS on eight consecutive nights from September 15 to 22, 1996. Read more...
- Baseball is a 1994 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the game of baseball. First broadcast on PBS, this was Burns' ninth documentary and won the 1995 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. Read more...
- The Civil War is a 1990 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the American Civil War. It was first broadcast on PBS on five consecutive nights from September 23 to 28, 1990. Over 39 million viewers tuned in to at least one episode, and viewership averaged more than 14 million viewers each evening, making it the most-watched program ever to air on PBS. It was awarded more than 40 major television and film honors. A companion book to the documentary was released shortly after the series aired.
The series was rebroadcast in June 1994 as a lead-up to Baseball, then remastered for its 12th anniversary in 2002, although it remained in standard definition resolution. To commemorate the film's 25th anniversary and the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, the film underwent a complete digital restoration to high definition format in 2015. This completely restored version aired on PBS September 7–11, 2015. Read more... - Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies is a 2015 American documentary film directed by Barak Goodman and produced by Ken Burns. The film, in three-episodes of two hours each, is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and describes the history of cancer, and cancer treatments, particularly in the United States.
The film is narrated by Edward Herrmann, who was himself suffering from terminal brain cancer at the time of its production. He died on December 31, 2014, three months before the film's release. Read more... - The National Parks: America's Best Idea is a 2009 documentary film for television, DVD and companion book (ISBN 978-0307268969) by director/producer Ken Burns and producer/writer Dayton Duncan which features the United States National Park system and traces the system's history. The series won two 2010 Emmy Awards for outstanding writing in episode 2 "The Last Refuge", and for outstanding non-fiction series. Read more...
- The Roosevelts: An Intimate History is a 2014 American documentary film directed and produced by Ken Burns. It covers the lives and times of the Roosevelt family, including Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican and the 26th President of the United States; Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat and the 32nd President of the United States, a cousin of Theodore; and Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, a niece of Theodore who had wed Franklin. As a result of the influence of Theodore and Franklin as Presidents, as well as Eleanor as First Lady, a modern democratic state of equal opportunity was begun in the United States. The documentary film begins with the birth of Theodore in 1858 and ends with the death of Eleanor in 1962. Read more...
- The Vietnam War is a 10-part American television documentary series about the Vietnam War written by Geoffrey C. Ward and directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The first episode premiered on PBS on September 17, 2017. The script is by Geoffrey Ward, and the series is narrated by Peter Coyote. Read more...
Dayton Duncan at the 2009 Texas Book Festival.
Dayton Duncan (born September 3, 1949) was the writer and co-producer of The National Parks: America's Best Idea documentary produced by Ken Burns, and has also been involved for many years with other series directed by Burns including The Civil War, Horatio's Drive, Baseball and Jazz. For the 12-hour series The West about the history of the American West, broadcast in 1996, Duncan was the co-writer and consulting producer. It won the Erik Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians.
He is the writer and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, a four-hour documentary broadcast in November 1997. The film attained the second-highest ratings (following The Civil War) in the history of PBS and won a Western Heritage award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a CINE Golden Eagle, as well as many other honors. He is the co-writer and producer of Mark Twain, a four-hour film biography of the great American humorist which was broadcast on PBS in 2002. His next film with Burns was Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip, about the first transcontinental automobile trip, which he wrote and produced. It won the prestigious Christopher Award and a Telly Award. Read more...- Baseball is a 1994 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the game of baseball. First broadcast on PBS, this was Burns' ninth documentary and won the 1995 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. Read more...
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