Ken Burns’s film festival

(2/2023) In February, Ken Burns came to speak at a conference in Gettysburg at Gettysburg College’s Majestic Theater as a part of the college’s festival celebrating his films. Few American documentarians have effected society as Ken Burns has. He is known for his documentaries on conflict, including the Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam War, and his upcoming film series about the American Revolution, slatted for a 2025 release. But he is also known for his series on society like Baseball, Jazz, Country Music, and a whole series titled, The West. His filmography as a contributor to PBS is expansive, with nearly forty individual documentaries since the early 1980’s being broadcast to American homes. Both the quantity and quality of his content have made American History more accessible to the modern television.

Starting off the conference, the audience had the chance to hear about his experiences of being back to Gettysburg after his monumental film The Civil War. Burns emphasized at the beginning of the conference the importance of the Civil War, and "how thrilled he was to be here," because of the importance of Gettysburg for him and even more so, the whole United States.

Burns spoke about the things he loves the most, even more so than filmmaking. Behind the scenes, Burns is a true family man, as he didn’t fail to mention his family and his home back in New Hampshire throughout the conference. He has two sets of girls, noting that he would bring his two youngest while he was making the film of the Civil War.

Burns also stated that the reason that he picked the movies that he produces is not his admiration of them, but the story that each movie tells; in other words, Burns chooses his works when the story needs to be told. The importance of his films also represents a retrospective look at how far not only American society, but people have come. His documentary titled Baseball exemplifies this strongly. Baseball chronicles how the great pastime moved from a game played by children to a billion-dollar entertainment industry. Within this story, Burns dives deep into the subject itself and how it has further progressed America as a country. Highlighting everything from integration of baseball by Jackie Robinson, which baseball historian Buck O’Neill cites as the first point in the modern civil rights movement, to baseball’s relations to labor in the United States, Burns’ documentary is truly a commentary on how far America has come and where it can go.

During the conference, Burns commented on what he considered his most important film. To him, the Civil War was the most important event in American history, so one might assume that his Civil War documentary would naturally have some kind of importance to Burns. However, he stated that "the documentary on the United States and the Holocaust that just came out will be the most important film I ever make." This opens up to a recent theme in Burns’ filmography, which is making shorter or more focused documentaries on subjects such as social justice. This includes documentaries on the Central Park Five and a more in-depth documentary on Jackie Robinson, independent from his Baseball documentary.

Ken Burns has certainly had an amazing career as a documentarian, collecting many awards for his work, including two Emmy awards and two Oscar awards for documentaries through countless nominations. It was clear from the conference that to put a tag on a certain film and to say, "this is my favorite or this is my most important documentary" would be impossible for Burns. He cited Duke Ellington in his press conference, talking about how the great American composer was always alluding to his next piece as his most important. Not directly quoting the musician, Ken Burns alluded to the fact that whatever his next film is, will be his most important.