In April 2022, PBS broadcast Benjamin Franklin, a two-part, four-hour film that explores the revolutionary life of one of America’s most celebrated and compelling personalities.
The interviewees speak about their challenges, difficulty finding treatment and encounters with stigma.
In June 2022, PBS broadcast Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness, a two-part, four-hour film that explores America’s mental health crisis through the eyes of more than twenty young people and the providers, advocates, family and friends who support them. and the Holocaust, The American Buffalo, Leonardo da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others. He is a sought-after public speaker, appearing at colleges, civic organizations and business groups throughout the country.įuture film projects include The U.S. Ken has been the recipient of more than thirty honorary degrees and has delivered many treasured commencement addresses.
#COUNTRY MUSIC KEN BURNS NARRATOR HOW TO#
I say that because Burns not only turned millions of persons onto history with his films, he showed us a new way of looking at our collective past and ourselves.” The late historian Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.” And Wynton Marsalis has called Ken “a master of timing, and of knowing the sweet spot of a story, of how to ask questions to get to the basic human feeling and to draw out the true spirit of a given subject.” Ken’s films have won sixteen Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations, and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. That includes feature filmmakers like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. In March 2009, David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun said, “… Burns is not only the greatest documentarian of the day, but also the most influential filmmaker period.
A December 2002 poll conducted by Real Screen Magazine listed The Civil War as second only to Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North as the “most influential documentary of all time,” and named Ken Burns and Robert Flaherty as the “most influential documentary makers” of all time. 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 silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky, and as I wonder where you are, I'm so lonesome, I could cry.Ken Burns has been making documentary films for over forty years. I mean, when Hank Williams says, "I'm so lonesome, I could cry," there's nobody that doesn't know what he's talking about. As someone who felt I was in love with other kinds of music, I have fallen in love with this music. Loretta is not copping to a philosophy, but she's speaking to women everywhere, who know exactly what she's talking about.įor me, all of these things, race or creativity or commerce or women, are all trumped by how powerful this music is. Now, this is the same year that the National Organization for Women is founded, the same year that women's liberation enters the lexicon. Think about what we're talking about, spousal abuse, spousal rape, a woman's right to her own body, even in marriage, women's rights in general. Nobody in rock 'n' roll is singing, "Don't come home a drinking with loving on your mind." When you get through Patsy to Loretta, we're in the mid-'60s. And country music is not immune to the indignities that women have to suffer everywhere.īut what's so interesting is, the original instrumentalist, the original guitar player is Mother Maybelle Carter.
#COUNTRY MUSIC KEN BURNS NARRATOR SERIES#
One of the surprising things about this series is, women are central to this story in a way they aren't in jazz or other forms, which are fraternities.