Noted American documentarian Ken Burns has gradually built a significant reputation and a devoted audience through a series of traditional meditations on Americana. His works are treasure troves of archival materials, skillfully incorporating period music and footage, photographs, periodicals, and ordinary people's correspondence. The latter is often movingly read by seasoned professional actors in an attempt to move away from a "Great Man" approach to history.
As with most non-fiction filmmakers, Burns wears multiple hats on his projects, often serving as writer, cinematographer, editor, and music director in addition to producing and directing. He achieved widespread acclaim with his 11-hour documentary, The Civil War (1990),which won two Emmys and broke all previous ratings records for public TV. The series' companion coffee table book, priced at $50, sold over 700,000 copies, and the audio version, narrated by Burns, was also a major best-seller.
The Civil War became the first documentary to gross over $100 million, and it has since become perennial fund-raising programming for public TV stations around the country. Burns' earlier work, Brooklyn Bridge (1981),an Oscar-nominated nostalgic chronicle of the construction of the iconic edifice, was more widely seen when rebroadcast on PBS the following year.
Burns has made other non-fiction films for theatrical release, including an acclaimed and ambiguous portrait of Depression-era Louisiana governor Huey Long (1985). However, PBS has been his true home, where he has cast a probing eye on various American subjects such as The Statue of Liberty (1985),The Congress (1989),painter Thomas Hart Benton (1989),and early radio with Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991).
Burns returned to long-form documentary with his most ambitious project to date, an 18-hour history of Baseball (1994),which aired on PBS in the fall of 1994. He approached the national pastime as a template for understanding changes in modern American society. Ironically, this was the only baseball on the air at the time, as the players and owners were embroiled in a bitter strike.
