Ken Burns: the American documentary filmmaker lands on Netflix

From the Vietnam War to jazz and baseball culture to civil war and the era of dry law, the great master of documentary arrives on the streaming platform

. the advent of streaming services and the growing interest of the public to view content based on reality, has changed the status of documentaries in the spectrum of audiovisual production. The documentary series, whose thematic horizons extend to more popular territories such as pop culture or
crime true it has become an attractive product for a large part of the users of streaming platforms. In the past, there was the clear division of the public between fans of the genre and those who equated the word "documentary" with boredom.

This new genre-wide hobby opens the doors to the discovery and critique of exceptional documentaries. It was very difficult to access. The arrival of some of Ken Burns' works in Argentina via Netflix is ​​an excellent opportunity to meet one of the most outstanding and prolific documentary filmmakers in the United States. Vietnam War,
The War (about the Second World War),
Prohibition (about the timing of the ban on alcohol in this country) and
Challenging the Nazis: The Sharp War is Burns' documentary series that can be seen on Netflix.

Up to now, access to the work of the American documentary maker was complicated; just one of his works had been published.
Ken Burns' Jazz one of his most famous series, can be seen here by the sign Film & Arts

Burns is a true author, although he has the support of a large production team and shares the direction of his documentaries with colleagues like Lynn Novick, with whom he did his last work,
The Vietnam War among many others who have produced together since 1989. The overriding interest in the history and culture of the United States, the display of the Hard work of the archives, a certain style of interviews, the use of music and narration by known personalities are some of their marks. The panoramic camera and the use of zooming on photos to generate a feeling of movement are already known as "Ken Burns Effect" and are included with this name among the tools in the video editing program of Apple products. [19659004 The director's style is completely different from the film's true, this form of documentary that dictates that the director's intervention must be minimal, even if he's experienced it on an isolated occasion. The themes that deal with the Burns series are difficult because of their historical importance and size. The filmmaker chooses to tell the story of the Second World War, the history of Jazz or the Vietnam conflict without focusing on a single aspect, but with the intention of understanding a fact or a phenomenon in its entirety. This brings him in some projects to use the serial format instead of the traditional feature film, which gives him the opportunity to do ten episodes of almost two hours each, as it is the case with
The G Vietnam War

"I always choose topics that I do not know and want to know," Burns says, in an interview with Alec Baldwin, in the podcast of the film. actor:
Here is the thing -. Instead of telling you what I know, I prefer to share the discovery process with you. "

As he explains in several interviews, L & # 39; approaching the Vietnam War was different because he thought to know more about the conflict, but every day that he spent in the investigation "was like a humiliation," when he discovered how much he knew few things.

from Vietnam, we are talking only about ourselves, "says Burns in the same conversation with Baldwin.What we had to do in the documentary was triangular with all the other perspectives, not just those of the We had to see what the civilians felt, the Vietcongs, but also our allies, the South Vietnamese, who were mistreated, and the men who were fighting, the deserters, the demonstrators against, if you do that. , the political dialectic is losing strength, because you realize that more than one truth can be obtained at any time. "

To be able to bring together a general image that includes a diversity of voices, Burns and his team of expertly trained advisers on the subject that they will discuss in each project, dedicated to seeing and commenting on different materials , drafts of the script and the first armed editing of the documentary Some of them, for example those who are specialists in American history, They worked on several projects.
The Vietnam War was composed of 20 people who brought different types of knowledge needed for documentary, war veterans to experts in pop culture of the time.

In collaboration with his team, Burns received criticism from various people, from historians to jazz specialists (for
Ken Burns Jazz) on his approach to each of the themes that he played.

Beyond the concern for historical rigor and the inclusion of diverse voices, the director focuses on his documentaries the importance of narrative. For Burns, although he and his team are run under journalistic ethics, they are first and foremost audiovisual producers, who have to bring their audience to a story, only in the case of documentaries, it is taken from reality. 19659008] "I am a friend of Steven Spielberg," says documentary filmmaker to students of Rowan University. "The laws of storytelling are the same for both, though sometimes I say," You can invent anything, no. "There is so much drama in what is and what was like in what can happen to Human imagination. "

Burns' pbadion for documentaries began very early. He studied film and photography at the University of Hampshire, where he organized with a few colleagues a producer to direct some non-profit causes films. After graduating, he took this model and founded his own production company.
Brooklyn Bridge 1982, earned him an Oscar nomination in the documentary category and gave him a very good start to a professional career. The consecration of Burns came with
The Civil War An 11-hour series on the American Civil War, which was premiered on television in 1990 and won two Emmys. His series devoted to baseball and jazz, two pillars of popular culture in the United States, eventually consolidated his reputation as one of the greatest contemporary documentary filmmakers, who continued to grow with his work on Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright The world and the era of prohibition, among others.

Most of Burns' documentaries – some of which required a decade of production – benefited from funding and exposure from the PBS (Public Broadcasting System), United States.

After the premiere of
G War in Vietnam, Burns and his team continued to work on new projects. Florentine Films, its production company, has 34 employees
Full time who are dedicated to the study of different aspects of the subjects that the director chooses with Lynn Novick and other colleagues. At present, they have a production plan until 2030, which includes projects on the American Revolution, Ernest Hemingway, Lyndon B. Johnson's relationship with civil rights and Burns' big dream. : a documentary about his friend, the former president Barack Obama