KEN BURNS
Award Winning Documentary Film Maker.

Ken Burns was the director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of the Public Television series Baseball. Four and a half years in the making and eighteen and a half hours in length, this film covers the history of baseball from the 1840's to the present. Through the extensive use of archival photographs and newsreel footage, baseball as a mirror of our larger society was brought to the screen over nine nights during its premier in September,1994. David Thomson of Film Comment Magazine said "Baseball is...a movie that dwarfs new offerings from our theatrical directors. To begin moderately, there is a depth and a complexity about America and its lives in Baseball that help illustrate the compromises in a movie as exceptional as Schindler's List. For what is more moving about Baseball is its certainty and optimism... the notion that our American screen might offer anything else as challenging in 1994 is utter fancy." David Bianculli of The New York Daily News said, Baseball...resonates like a Mozart symphony." Richard Zoglin of Time Magazine wrote, "Baseball is rich in drama, irresistible as nostalgia, and ... an instructive window into our national psychology." And Matt Roush of USA Today said, "...Baseball is a treat for all viewers... If there's any joy in Mudville... it's because Ken Burns is at bat. Boy, do we need him now... call it a home run."

Ken was also the director, producer, co-writer, chief cinematographer, music director and executive producer of the landmark television series The Civil War. This film was the highest rated series in the history of American Public Television and attracted an audience of 40 million during its premiere in September 1990. The series has been honored with more than forty major film and television awards, including two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, Producer of the Year Award from the Producer's Guild, People's Choice Award, Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, D.W. Griffiths Award, and the $50,000 Lincoln Prize, among dozens of others. The New York Times called it a masterpiece and said that Ken Burns "takes his place as the most accomplished documentary filmmaker of his generation." Tom Shales of The Washington Post said, "This is not just good television, nor even just great television. This is heroic television." The columnist George Will said, "If better use has ever been made of television, I have not seen it and do not expect to see better until Ken Burns turns his prodigious talents to his next project."

Ken Burns has been making documentary films for more than fifteen years, beginning with the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge. He has gone on to make several other award-winning films, including The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God; The Statue of Liberty, also nominated for an Oscar; Huey Long, the story of the turbulent Southern dictator, which enjoyed rare theatrical release; The Congress: The History and Promise of Representative Government; Thomas Hart Benton a portrait of the regionalist artist; and most recently, Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio. Burns has directed a series of filmed biographies on noteworthy Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mark Twain. His next major series, a sequel to Baseball and The Civil War, to be broadcast in the year 2000, is a history of Jazz.