A Conversation with Ken Burns
From: National Endowment for the Arts
Series: Art Works Podcast
Length: 22:24
For more than 30 years, Ken Burns has been making documentary films. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Burns has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made about different facets of America – from the Civil War to World War II; from baseball to jazz. Using archival photographs and musical motifs, Ken Burns creates films that tell us stories about our country’s past and its culture. His latest project is called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.
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Piece Description
For more than 30 years, Ken Burns has been making documentary films. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Burns has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made about different facets of America – from the Civil War to World War II; from baseball to jazz. Using archival photographs and musical motifs, Ken Burns creates films that tell us stories about our country’s past and its culture. His latest project is called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.
Transcript
Transcript of conversation with Ken Burns
Ken Burns: I’ve been passionately interested in how my country works and each project we take is, I think, revealing of sort of the interior of our country in interesting ways. In some ways, the easier way is to say that we’ve made the same film over and over again, asking one deceptively simple question - who are we? In institutions like baseball or jazz or searing events like the Civil War or the Second World War, in biographies of important Americans like Mark Twain and Frank Lloyd Wright, Huey Long, you learn something. You don’t ever answer that question, but you deepen it with each successive project.
Jo Reed: That was documentary film-maker Ken Burns, Welcome to Art Works, the program that goes behind the scenes with some of the nation’s great artists to explore how Art Works. I’m your host, Josephine Reed.
For more than 30 years,...
Read the full transcript
Musical Works
| Title | Artist | Album | Label | Year | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Renewal | Doug and Judy Smith | n/a. | n/a | 00:00 |
Additional Credits
Interview conducted and edited by Jo Reed
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