This page uses content from the Ken Burns biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

For other people named Burns, see Burns (disambiguation).

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953[1] [2]) is an American documentary filmmaker.

Burns is well known for his style in documentary material, making use of original prints and photographs, and has produced several acclaimed historical and biographical documentaries for television and film. Among his most notable productions were miniseries on the American Civil War (The Civil War, 1990), baseball (Baseball, 1994), and jazz (JAZZ, 2001).

Burns's documentaries have been nominated for two Academy Awards and six of his documentaries have been nominated for one or more Emmy Awards. He won three Emmy Awards for The Civil War, for Baseball and for Unforgivable Blackness.

Biography

Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1953. He is a graduate of Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1975, and went on to be one of the co-founders of Florentine Films. Burns received a L.H.D. from Bates College in 2002. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire with his wife Julie. He has three daughters.

Burns's brother, Ric Burns, is also a noted documentary filmmaker, whose work has appeared on national public television for nearly two decades, earning significant recognition. Ric Burns is perhaps best known for his epic PBS series, New York: A Documentary Film.

Burns delivered the commencement address for the Georgetown College Class of 2006 at Georgetown University[3] and also for Lehigh University's Class of 2006.

Burns's film series The Civil War is generally considered to be his masterpiece. Narrated by Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough, Burns filled in many other roles, serving as director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of The Civil War. The series has been honored with more than 40 major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, Producer of the Year Award from the Producers Guild of America, People's Choice Award, Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffith Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others. The nine episodes explore the Civil War through personal stories and photos that create a very different kind of experience from watching nearly any other modern movie today. During the creation of the movie, Burns filmed thousands of archived photographs, with panning and fading transitions, which would later be known as the Ken Burns Effect. The Civil War has been viewed by more than 40 million people. (PBS.org)

Documentaries

Burns's documentaries include:

• Brooklyn Bridge, in 1981
• The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God, in 1984
• The Statue of Liberty, in 1985
• Huey Long, in 1985
• Congress, in 1988
• Thomas Hart Benton, in 1988
• The Civil War, in 1990
• Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, in 1991
• Baseball, in 1994
• The West, in 1996
• Thomas Jefferson in 1997
• Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, in 1997
• Frank Lloyd Wright, in 1998
• Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, in 1999
• JAZZ, in 2001
• Mark Twain, in 2001
• Horatio's Drive, in 2003
• Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, in 2004

At the moment Ken Burns is working on three more documentaries:

• The War, to be released in 2007
• America’s Best Idea: Our National Parks, to be released in 2009
• Forbidden Fruit: Prohibition in America

Burns's short films include:

• William Segal, in 1992
• Vézelay, in 1996
• In the Marketplace, in 2000

Bibliography

• Ken Burns bibliography (via UC Berkeley)

External links

• Ken Burns PBS
• Commencement address by Ken Burns to the Georgetown College Class of 2006 at Georgetown University

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