Ken Burns

At 71 years old, Ken Burns has this physical status:

Kenneth Lauren Burns (born 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his use of archival footage and photographs in documentary films.

The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (1999), The War (2000), The Lincolns (2005), The Vietnam War (2017), and Country Music (2019).

In addition to that, he was the executive producer of both The West (1996, directed by Stephen Ives) and Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015, directed by Barak Goodman) and many Emmy Awards (for 1981's Brooklyn Bridge and 1985's The Statue of Liberty).

Early life and education

Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 29, 1953, to Lyla Smith, a biotechnician, and Robert Kyle Burns, Jr., Jr., while a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Columbia University in Manhattan. Ric Burns, the documentary filmmaker, is his younger brother.

Burns' academic family moved often. Saint-Véran, France; Newark, Delaware; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his father teaches at the University of Michigan, were among the places they called home. Burns likes his family as hippies.

When Burns' mother was three, she was discovered to have breast cancer when she was three years old, and she died when he was 11, a situation that he attributed to: "My whole work was an effort to make people long gone come back alive." He absorbed the family encyclopedia as a child, preferring history over fiction.

He shot a documentary about an Ann Arbor factory after receiving an 8 mm film movie camera for his 17th birthday. In 1971, he graduated from Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. He attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where students are judged based on narrative reviews rather than letter grades, and students enroll in self-directed academic concentrations rather than choosing a traditional major.

Burns worked in a record store to pay his tuition. Burns, who lived on less than $2,500 a two-years in Walpole, New Hampshire, studied under photographers Jerome Liebling, Elaine Mayes, and others, who referred to him as his "principal mentor." In 1975, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in film studies and design.

Personal life

Burns married Amy Stechler in 1982. Sarah and Lilly, the couple's two children, were born in the United States. In 1993, the couple's marriage ended in divorce.

Burns was residing in Walpole, New Hampshire, as of 2017. On October 18, 2003, he and Julie Brown, Leslie Brown's niece and the Smith Barney senior vice president Richard Brown and Ellen Brown's stepdaughter, married. Room to Grow, a non-profit that provides assistance to children in need of assistance. Olivia and Willa Burns are their two children.

Burns is a descendant of Johannes de Peyster Sr., an American Revolutionary War doctor from Philadelphia, and he is a distant cousin of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Burns reveals he is a descendant of a slave owner from the Deep South in addition to having a lineage that goes back to Colonial Americans of Loyalist allegiance during the American Revolution.

Burns is a huge quilter. Around one-third of the quilts from his personal collection were on display at The International Quilt Study Center & Museum in the University of Nebraska from January 19 to May 13, 2018. Burns is also a huge fan of the New York Times crossword puzzle, appearing in the film Wordplay, and in a 2022 interview, he claims he completes the puzzle every day.

Burns responded when asked if he'd ever film about his mother Lyla: "All of my films are about her." I don't think I could do it well because of how painful it is.

Burns has been a long-serving member of the Democratic Party, raising nearly $40,000 in political contributions. Burns was selected by the Democratic National Committee in August 2008 to produce Senator Ted Kennedy's inaugural video at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, a video praised by Politico as a "Burns-crafted tribute to him" as the modern Ulysses carrying his party home to port."

Kennedy died in August 2009, and Burns made a short eulogy video at his funeral. Burns compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln in endorsing Barack Obama for the US presidency in December 2007. On Current TV, he said he had intended to be a regular contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann. He delivered a commencement address for Stanford University in 2016, criticizing Donald Trump.

Burns endorsed Ed Markey in the Massachusetts Senate Democratic Primary in 2020.

Burns referred to the Republican Party as "the party of white supremacy" in 2022.

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Career

Burns began working as a cinematographer for BBC, Italian television, and other projects. He began working on adapting David McCullough's book The Great Bridge in 1977, after completing several documentary short films. Burns directed the film Brooklyn Bridge (1981), which was narrated by David McCullough, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and ran on PBS in the United States, with a distinctive style of documentary filmmaking.

Burns was Oscar nominated for The Statue of Liberty (1985), following another documentary, Hands to Work, Hearts to God (1984). Burns regularly collaborates with author and scholar Geoffrey C. Ward, notably on documentaries such as The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, and the 10 part television series The Vietnam War (aired September 2017).

Burns has had a long, fruitful career as a producer of well-received television documentaries and documentary miniseries. Thomas Hart Benton, 1988), mass media (Empire of the Air, 1990), art (Thomas Jefferson, 1994), literature (Jazz, 2005), and warfare (Thomas Jefferson, 1991; Country Music, 2019), and warfare (Thomas Jefferson, 1999), art (Thomas Jefferson, 1990), and war (the 11-hour World War II documentary "Let d'oeuvre," according to All Media Guide) ("many consider his "chef d'oeuvre

Burns and PBS reached an agreement in 2007 to continue producing PBS content well into the next decade. According to a 2017 article in The New Yorker Burns and his company, Florentine Films, have chosen topics for documentaries that will be available by 2030. Country music, Muhammad Ali, Ernest Hemingway, the American Revolution, Lyndon B. Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama, and the American criminal justice system are among the topics discussed in this series, as well as African-American history from the Civil War to the Great Migration. Hemingway, a three-episode, six-hour documentary about Hemingway's life, work, and passions debuted on the Public Broadcasting System on April 5, 2021, a recapitulation of Hemingway's life, labors, and passions, co-produced and directed by Burns and Lynn Novick.

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