Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film | |
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Directed by | Ric Burns |
Written by | Ric Burns |
Produced by | Marilyn Ness Ric Burns |
Cinematography | Buddy Squires Michael Chin Jon Else |
Edited by | Li-Shin Yu |
Music by | Brian Keane |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | PBS |
Release date |
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Running time | 100 minutes |
Language | English |
Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film is a 2002 documentary and biographical film that traces the life of the American photographer Ansel Adams. He is most noted for his landscape images of the American West. The film is narrated by David Ogden Stiers and features the voices of Josh Hamilton, Barbara Feldon, and Eli Wallach. It was broadcast on PBS as part of the series American Experience .
The film features images of Adams' work, readings of his writing, archival footage and original footage of the landscapes that inspired him. Interview subjects included Michael Adams and Anne Adams Helms (Ansel Adams's son and daughter), Mary Street Alinder, Carl Pope, Alex Ross, John Sexton, Jonathan Spaulding, Andrea Gray Stillman, William A. Turnage and John Szarkowski.
Director Ric Burns shot portions of the film in the same landscapes that were the settings for Adams' most iconic images. Said Burns, "to get to the heart of what so inspired Ansel Adams, we literally followed in his footsteps. We lugged our cameras up sheer rock faces and hiked the winding trails that led Ansel to his photographic revelations. And they led us to Ansel." [1]
Laura Fries of Variety wrote: “Burns creates a visually mesmerizing retrospective of Adams’s career...the film examines the inspirations and intentions of the artist who transcended the medium to become an American folk hero.” [2]
The Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Award 2001-2002 [3]
Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming 2002 [4]
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.
David Allen Ogden Stiers was an American actor and conductor. He appeared in numerous productions on Broadway, and originated the role of Feldman in The Magic Show, in which he appeared for four years between 1974 and 1978.
The Civil War is a 1990 American television documentary miniseries created by Ken Burns about the American Civil War. It was the first broadcast to air on PBS for five consecutive nights, from September 23 to 27, 1990.
Ant Farm was an avant-garde architecture, graphic arts, and environmental design practice, founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Chip Lord and Doug Michels (1943-2003). Ant Farm's work often made use of popular icons in the United States, as a strategy to redefine the way those were conceived within the country's imagination.
Clyde Butcher is an American large-format camera photographer known for wilderness photography of the Florida landscape. He began his career doing color photography before switching to large-scale black-and-white landscape photography after the death of his son. Butcher is a strong advocate of conservation efforts and uses his work to promote awareness of the beauty of natural places.
The Wilderness Society is an American non-profit land conservation organization that is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States. They advocate for the designation of federal wilderness areas and other protective designations, such as for national monuments. They support balanced uses of public lands, and advocate for federal politicians to enact various land conservation and balanced land use proposals. The Wilderness Society also engages in a number of ancillary activities, including education and outreach, and hosts one of the most valuable collections of Ansel Adams photographs at their headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Nature photography is a wide range of photography taken outdoors and devoted to displaying natural elements such as landscapes, wildlife, plants, and close-ups of natural scenes and textures. Nature photography tends to put a stronger emphasis on the aesthetic value of the photo than other photography genres, such as photojournalism and documentary photography.
Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam is a 1987 American documentary film inspired by the anthology of the same title, directed by Bill Couturié. The film's narration consists of real letters written by American soldiers, which are read by actors, including Robert De Niro and Martin Sheen. The footage includes film from TV news, the U.S. Department of Defense and home movies by the soldiers.
Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward.
Manufactured Landscapes is a 2006 Canadian documentary film about the industrial landscape photography of Edward Burtynsky. It was directed by Jennifer Baichwal and is distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It was the first of three documentary collaborations between Baichwall and Burtynsky, followed by Watermark in 2013 and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2018.
Koyaanisqatsi is a 1982 American non-narrative documentary film directed and produced by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke.
John "Oggy" Ogden is an Australian photographer, cinematographer, writer and publisher, whose wide ranging career has encompassed producing television commercials, international documentary making, music video production, drama, and fine art photography.
Landscape photography shows the spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on human-made features or disturbances of landscapes. Landscape photography is done for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most common is to recall a personal observation or experience while in the outdoors, especially when traveling. Others pursue it particularly as an outdoor lifestyle, to be involved with nature and the elements, some as an escape from the artificial world.
Brian Keane is an American composer, music producer, and guitarist. Keane has been described as "a musician's musician, a composer's composer, and one of the most talented producers of a generation" by Billboard magazine.
Steeplechase Films is a documentary production company founded in 1989 by filmmaker Ric Burns. They produce films focusing on events and people in American history, mainly for the PBS series American Experience. Ric and his company are best known for the eight-part, seventeen-and-a-half-hour series, New York: A Documentary Film, which premiered nationally on PBS to wide public and critical acclaim when broadcast in three installments in November 1999, September 2001, and September 2003.
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is a black-and-white photograph taken by Ansel Adams, late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of highway US 84 / US 285 in the unincorporated community of Hernandez, New Mexico. The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky above a collection of modest dwellings, a church and a cross-filled graveyard, with snow-covered mountains in the background. Adams captured a single image, with the sunset lighting the white crosses and buildings. Because Adams did not date the image, attempts have been made to determine a date from astronomical information in the photograph. It is one of Adams' most popular works.
Rugged Entertainment LLC is a full service film and media production company, founded in 2007 by Academy Award Nominated Director Peter Spirer after his tenures at QD3 Entertainment Aslan Productions and Metropolis Films. Rugged Entertainment secured a multi-picture documentary and narrative deal with distributor Image Entertainment/RLJ and recently joined forces with Barry Gordon and XLrator Media, together the two companies have partnered up to create feature length content, distributed worldwide.
American Epic is a documentary film series about the first recordings of roots music in the United States during the 1920s and their cultural, social and technological impact on North America and the world. Directed and co-written by Bernard MacMahon, the story is told through twelve ethnically and musically diverse musicians who auditioned for and participated in these pioneering recording sessions: The Carter Family, the Memphis Jug Band, Elder J.E. Burch, The Williamson Brothers, Dick Justice, Charley Patton, The Hopi Indian Chanters, Joseph Kekuku, Lydia Mendoza, the Breaux Family, Mississippi John Hurt and Blind Willie Johnson. The film series is the core of the American Epic media franchise, which includes several related works.
The Revenge of the Dead Indians is a 1993 documentary film essay directed by Henning Lohner about composer John Cage and his theories about music. It pays tribute to Cage's thoughts, music, and influence and has been described as "an unexpected and fascinating combination of intellectual thought, viewpoints and opinions."
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