Person

Ken Burns

0 members

What's driving coverage of Ken Burns right now?

Comments

Ask Genius by OpenServe:

Free account · your comment posts right after signup

Ken Burns

Not who you're looking for? Others named Ken Burns: English football referee (1931–2016) · Footballer (1923-2006)

0 members

What's driving coverage of Ken Burns right now?

🎬 Filmography

Screen catalogue →

The American Revolution

2025 · Creator

Comments

Ask Genius by OpenServe:

Free account · your comment posts right after signup

Ken Burns across IJR

Studio characters

Ken BurnsThe American documentarian with nowhere else to be today.

Ask Genius by OpenServe about Ken Burns Create in Studio Build a game Watch videos

Overview

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS. His widely known documentary series include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), The Vietnam War (2017), and Country Music (2019). He was also executive producer of both The West (1996), and Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015). Burns's documentaries have earned two Academy Award nominations (for 1981's Brooklyn Bridge and 1985's The Statue of Liberty) and have won several Emmy Awards, among other honors. Early life and education Burns was born on July 29, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, to Lyla Smith (née Tupper) Burns, a biotechnician, and Robert Kyle Burns, Jr., at the time a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Columbia University in Manhattan. The documentary filmmaker Ric Burns is his younger brother. Burns's academic family moved frequently. Among places they called home were Saint-Véran, France; Newark, Delaware; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father taught at the University of Michigan. Burns describes his family as hippies.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“One would think that making a film is an ; you're building this—it's not, it's . The best metaphor I know of is we make in [ ] and it takes forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. And that's what the process is.”
— 60 Minutes Season 53, Episode 42, "SolarWinds, Ken Burns, Best Band in the Land" (2021)
“I think this is the greatest threat to our republic ever. Not the Depression, not World War II, not the Civil War. This is it … This moment of all these intersecting viruses, of novel coronaviruses and of racial injustice — [a] 402-year-old-virus. And it’s an age-old human virus of lying and misinformation and paranoia and conspiracy. This is the pill that will kill us unless we do something.”
— As quoted in "Opinion: Ken Burns is an optimist. But he’s very worried about America." by Alyssa Rosenberg, in The Washington Post (24 June 2021)
“Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.”
— "Opinion: Ken Burns: Being American means reckoning with our violent history." by Ken Burns, in The Washington Post (22 November 2021)

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Not who you're looking for? Others named Ken Burns: English football referee (1931–2016) · Footballer (1923-2006)

🎬 Filmography

Screen catalogue →

The American Revolution

2025 · Creator

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.

Ken Burns across IJR

Studio characters

Ken BurnsThe American documentarian with nowhere else to be today.

Ask Genius by OpenServe about Ken Burns Create in Studio Build a game Watch videos

Overview

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS. His widely known documentary series include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), The Vietnam War (2017), and Country Music (2019). He was also executive producer of both The West (1996), and Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015). Burns's documentaries have earned two Academy Award nominations (for 1981's Brooklyn Bridge and 1985's The Statue of Liberty) and have won several Emmy Awards, among other honors. Early life and education Burns was born on July 29, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York, to Lyla Smith (née Tupper) Burns, a biotechnician, and Robert Kyle Burns, Jr., at the time a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Columbia University in Manhattan. The documentary filmmaker Ric Burns is his younger brother. Burns's academic family moved frequently. Among places they called home were Saint-Véran, France; Newark, Delaware; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father taught at the University of Michigan. Burns describes his family as hippies.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“One would think that making a film is an ; you're building this—it's not, it's . The best metaphor I know of is we make in [ ] and it takes forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. And that's what the process is.”
— 60 Minutes Season 53, Episode 42, "SolarWinds, Ken Burns, Best Band in the Land" (2021)
“I think this is the greatest threat to our republic ever. Not the Depression, not World War II, not the Civil War. This is it … This moment of all these intersecting viruses, of novel coronaviruses and of racial injustice — [a] 402-year-old-virus. And it’s an age-old human virus of lying and misinformation and paranoia and conspiracy. This is the pill that will kill us unless we do something.”
— As quoted in "Opinion: Ken Burns is an optimist. But he’s very worried about America." by Alyssa Rosenberg, in The Washington Post (24 June 2021)
“Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.”
— "Opinion: Ken Burns: Being American means reckoning with our violent history." by Ken Burns, in The Washington Post (22 November 2021)

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.