Ken Burns
Author
Description
"In Our America, [filmmaker Ken] Burns has assembled the images that, for him, best embody nearly two hundred years of the American experiment, taken by some of our most reknowned photographers and by others who worked in obscurity. We see America’s vast natural beauty as well as its dynamic cities and communities. There are striking images of war and civil conflict, and of communities drawing together across lines of race and class. Our greatest...
Formats
Description
An immersive documentary film series directed by acclaimed filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the epic story of one of the most divisive, consequential and misunderstood events in American history, as it has never before been told on film.. Winner of Best Limited Documentary Series at the Critics' Choice Documentary Awards and nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary from the Directors Guild of America.. "Ken Burns's...
3) The West
Description
Chronicles the history of the American West beginning before the European settlers and continuing into the 20th century. Includes the peoples, the wagon trains, the Gold Rush, the Civil War, the transcontinental railroad and the destruction of the buffalo, wars against the Indians, settlers in the West, the Wounded Knee massacre, and beginnings of the new West.
Description
"For more than 100 years, the Statue of Liberty has been a symbol of hope and a refuge for generations of immigrants. In this lyrical, compelling and provocative portrait of the statue, Ken Burns explores both the history of America's premier symbol and the meaning of liberty itself. Featuring rare archival photographs, paintings and drawings, readings from actual diaries, letters and newspapers of the day, the fascinating story of this universally...
Formats
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Traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and what Burns believes is the most stunning cinematography in Florentine Films' history, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and...
6) Hemingway
Description
"Hemingway examines the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers-Ernest Hemingway. Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway's biography with excerpts from his work. The film penetrates the myth of Hemingway to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure."--container.
7) The Shakers
Description
This revealing and poignant film by Ken Burns portrays 200 years of Shaker life in America, guided by the recollections of the three surviving members of the faith, along with a wealth of archival material from over 40 collections. Explore every aspect of this strange and noble sect that produced some of the greatest architecture and furniture in American history.
Description
It is a rare look at the over four-decade intimate relationship Ken Burns has with his America and beloved community of Walpole, NH, and the importance that a "sense of place" and belonging has in one's life. That the essential American fabric of patriotism and goodness are woven through each of us, and often, the road less traveled is a good decision.
9) Prohibition
Description
This videodisc explores the extraordinary story of what happens when a freedom-loving nation outlaws the sale of intoxicating liquor, and the disastrous unintended consequences that follow. The utterly relevant cautionary tale raises profound questions about the proper role of government and the limits of legislating morality. When the country goes dry in 1920, after a century of debate, millions of law-abiding Americans become lawbreakers overnight....
10) The Congress
Description
"In this elegant, penetrating and moving portrait of the United States Congress, filmmaker Ken Burns profiles an American institution whose ideals and actions affect us all. Narrated by David McCullough, the program employs historic film footage and interviews with insiders" including David Broker, Alistair Cooke and Cokie Roberts to detail the personalities, events and issues that have animated Congress' first 200 years."--Publisher's website.
Description
"Benjamin Franklin explores the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century's most consequential and compelling personalities, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States. Franklin's 84 years (1706-1790) spanned an epoch of momentous change in science, technology, literature, politics, and government—fields he himself advanced through lifelong commitments to societal and self-improvement. But Franklin's...
Description
It tells the story of the attempted takedown of one of America's most iconoclastic colleges, Hampshire College, how a group of determined students succeeded to save it, and by the same token, save their rights to an education that taught them to think critically and to expect a seat at the table. With the help of the students who filmed their 75-day sit-in (the longest in American college history), director Amy Goldstein builds a thriller-like story...
14) Jackie Robinson
Description
Tells of the story of Jack Roosevelt Robinson, a sharecropper's son who elevated an entire race and country when he broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947. The film illuminates Robinson's place as a leader and icon of the civil rights movement whose exemplary life and aspirational message of equality continues to inspire generations of Americans.
Description
This film "examines America's response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Americans consider themselves a 'nation of immigrants,' but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust unfolded in Europe, the United States proved unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge. Through riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who as children endured...
Description
"A fifteenth century Italian polymath of soaring imagination and profound intellect, Leonardo da Vinci left behind artistic works of staggering beauty as well as detailed anatomical sketches, studies of geology, gravity and water, and designs for machines of war and flying contraptions that today are marveled at for their ingenuity and foresight. From his birth out of wedlock to a notary and a peasant woman and apprenticeship to a distinguished Florentine...
17) Mark Twain
Description
Recounts Mark Twain's life told primarily through his own words. Includes interviews with Hal Holbrook, Arthur Miller, William Styron and many others.
Appears on list
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Jazz is born in New Orleans at the turn of the century emerging from several forms of music including ragtime, marching bands, work songs, spirituals, creole music, funeral parade music and above all, the blues. Musicians profiled here who advanced early jazz are Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Freddie Keppard, and musicians of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.
Description
Horatio Nelson Jackson, an eccentric Vermont doctor, drove from San Francisco to New York City, in 1903 to became the first person to drive an automobile across the continent - a feat never before accomplished. It would mark the beginning of a new era in America and the end of another. It took Lewis & Clark over two years to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific - Horatio went the opposite direction, by means of the "Horseless carriage", in less than...
Appears on list
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In the mid 1930s, as the Great Depression refuses to lift, Benny Goodman finds himself hailed as the "King of Swing" and becomes the first white bandleader to hire black musicians. He has a host or rivals among them, Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Glen Miller and Artie Shaw. Louis Armstrong heads a big band of his own, while Duke Ellington continues his independent course, but great black artists still can't eat or sleep in many of the...