Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle United States history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS. Burns lives in the small town of Walpole, New Hampshire.
Kenneth Lauren Burns was born on July 29, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York.[2] His parents were Lyla Smith (née Tupper) Burns,[3] a biotechnician,[4] and Robert Kyle Burns Jr., who at the time of Ken's birth was a graduate student in cultural anthropology at Columbia University.[3] The documentary filmmaker Ric Burns is his younger brother.[5][6]
Burns' academic family moved frequently, including to Saint-Véran, France; Newark, Delaware; and Ann Arbor, Michigan; where his father taught at the University of Michigan.[4] Burns describes growing up as "hippies" in Ann Arbor.[7]
Ken Burns in 2010
Burns' mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was three, and she died when he was 11,[4] a circumstance that he said helped shape his career; he credited his psychologist father-in-law, Gerald Stechler,[8] with a significant insight: "He told me that my whole work was an attempt to make people long gone come back alive."[4] He recalls:
a searing memory of the summer of 1962, when I was almost 9, joining our family dinner on a hot, sweltering day in a tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware, and seeing my mother crying. She had just learned, and my brother and I had just been told, that she would be dead of cancer within six months. But that’s not what was causing her tears. Our inadequate health insurance had practically bankrupted us, and our neighbors – equally struggling working people – had taken up a collection and presented my parents with six crisp $20 bills – $120 in total – enough to keep us solvent for more than a month. In that moment, I understood something about community and courage, about constant struggle and little victories. That hot June evening was a victory. And I have spent my entire professional life trying to resurrect small moments within the larger sweep of American history, trying to find our better angels in the most difficult of circumstances, trying to wake the dead, to hear their stories.[9]
Well-read as a child, he engrossed himself in the family encyclopedia, preferring history to fiction.
Upon receiving an 8 mm film movie camera for his 17th birthday, he shot a documentary about an Ann Arbor factory. He graduated from Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor in 1971.[10] Declining reduced tuition to attend the University of Michigan, he instead attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where students are graded through narrative evaluations rather than letter grades, and where students create self-directed academic concentrations instead of choosing a traditional major.[4]
Burns worked in a record store to help pay his tuition. He lived on as little as $2,500 in two years in Walpole, New Hampshire.[11] Burns studied under photographers Jerome Liebling, Elaine Mayes, and others. He describes Liebling as his "principal mentor."[7] He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in film studies and design[12] in 1975.[4]
Florentine Films
In 1976, Burns, Elaine Mayes, and college classmate Roger Sherman founded a production company named Florentine Films in Walpole, New Hampshire. The company's name was borrowed from Mayes's hometown of Florence, Massachusetts. Another Hampshire College student, Buddy Squires, was invited to succeed Mayes as a founding member one year later.[13][14] The trio were later joined by a fourth member, Lawrence "Larry" Hott. Hott did not actually matriculate at Hampshire, but worked on films there. Hott had begun his career as an attorney, having attended nearby Western New England Law School.[13]
Each member works independently, but releases content under the shared name of Florentine Films.[15] As such, their individual "subsidiary" companies include Ken Burns Media, Sherman Pictures, and Hott Productions. Burns's oldest child, Sarah, is also an employee of the company as of 2020.[16]
Burns initially worked as a cinematographer for the BBC, Italian television, and others. In 1977, having completed some documentary short films, he began work on adapting David McCullough's book The Great Bridge, about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.[12] Developing a signature style of documentary filmmaking in which he "adopted the technique of cutting rapidly from one still picture to another in a fluid, linear fashion [and] then pepped up the visuals with 'first hand' narration gleaned from contemporary writings and recited by top stage and screen actors",[17] Burns made the feature documentary Brooklyn Bridge (1981),[18] which was narrated by David McCullough, earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and ran on PBS in the United States.
Burns has built a long, successful career producing and directing well-received television documentaries and documentary miniseries, mostly on different aspects of United States history. His body of work covers diverse subjects, including art (Thomas Hart Benton, 1988), mass media (Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, 1991), sports (Baseball, 1994, updated with 10th Inning, 2010), political history (Thomas Jefferson, 1997), music (Jazz, 2001; Country Music, 2019), literature (Mark Twain, 2001; Hemingway, 2021), environmentalism (The National Parks, 2009), and war (the 15-hour World War II documentary The War, 2007; and the 11-hour The Civil War, 1990, which All Media Guide says "many consider his 'chef d'oeuvre'").[17] "It's the most important event in American history, [...] I think the Civil War is an unbelievable guide to who we are" he says in interviews.[19]
In April 2025, Burns, released a two-part documentary on Leonardo da Vinci, broadcast on Arte . Titled Art and Experience, followed by The Quest for Beauty, the project marked a departure from his usual focus on American history. The project examined the life and work of the Renaissancepolymath through Burns' characteristic documentary style.[23][24]
Personal life
In 1979, Burns moved from Manhattan, New York City, to Walpole, New Hampshire, where he rented a house that he eventually bought. The original reason for the move was that his rent in Manhattan rose from US$275 to $325 (from US$1,191 to $1,408 in 2024 dollars). He has credited the move to the small town with ultimately jump-starting his later success, and he still resides there to this day. [25]
In 1982, Burns married Amy Stechler. The couple had two daughters, Sarah and Lilly.[26][12] Their marriage ended in divorce in 1993.[27]
On October 18, 2003, Burns married for a second time to Julie Deborah Brown, daughter of Leslie Mundjer and the Smith Barney senior vice president Richard Brown. Julie Deborah Brown founded Room to Grow, a non-profit organization providing aid to children separated from their families.[28] They have two daughters.[29]
When asked if he would ever make a film regarding his mother Lyla, Burns responded: "All of my films are about her. I don't think I could do it directly, because of how intensely painful it is."[4]
Burns has recounted his devotion to the New York Times crossword puzzle, saying in 2022, "There has not been a day since [appearing in the documentary Wordplay] when I haven't done the New York Times crossword puzzle."[7]
In August 2009, Kennedy died, and Burns produced a short eulogy video at his funeral. In endorsing Barack Obama for the U.S. presidency in December 2007, Burns compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln.[38] He said he had planned to be a regular contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV.[39] In 2016, he also delivered a commencement speech at Stanford University criticizing Donald Trump. He also criticized the media for devoting so much airtime to him and failing to give him scrutiny: "Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago."[9][40]
In 2023, a 2013 photograph of Ken Burns and Clarence Thomas at a Koch Brothers fundraising event was made public in a Pro Publica article about Justice Thomas' connections to right-wing activists.[41] Burns stated that the encounter was a brief social encounter resulting from Charles Koch's support of PBS programming.[42]
In 2004, Burns received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.[50]
In 2010, the National Parks Conservation Association honored him and Dayton Duncan with the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks. The award recognizes an individual or organization that has effectively communicated the values of the National Park System to the American public.[52]As of 2010[update], there is a Ken Burns Wing at the Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography and Video at Hampshire College.[53]
In 2012, Burns received the Washington University International Humanities Medal.[55] The medal, awarded biennially and accompanied by a cash prize of $25,000, is given to honor a person whose humanistic endeavors in scholarship, journalism, literature, or the arts have made a difference in the world. Past winners include Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk in 2006, journalist Michael Pollan in 2008, and novelist and nonfiction writer Francine Prose in 2010.[56]
In 2022 he served as the commencement speaker at the University of Pennsylvania and received an Honorary Doctor of Arts.[63]
In 2025, he received the Critics Choice Documentary Awards IMPACT Award. The prestigious award recognizes documentarians whose work has "illuminated our shared story, made complex issues accessible to broad audiences, and sparked meaningful dialogue that inspires reflection and action. Ken Burns exemplifies this impact through a career that has brought the American experience vividly to life and deepened the nation’s understanding of itself." It was presented at the 10th Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards on November 9 at the Edison Ballroom, New York City.
Style
Burns frequently incorporates simple musical leitmotifs or melodies. For example, The Civil War features a distinctive violin melody throughout, "Ashokan Farewell", which was performed for the film by its composer, fiddler Jay Ungar. One critic noted, "One of the most memorable things about The Civil War was its haunting, repeated violin melody, whose thin, yearning notes seemed somehow to sum up all the pathos of that great struggle."[64]
Burns often gives life to still photographs by slowly zooming out subjects of interest and panning from one subject to another. It has long been used in film production where it is known as the "rostrum camera". This technique, possible in many professional and home software applications, is now termed the "Ken Burns effect" in Apple's iPhoto, iMovie, and Final Cut Pro X software applications. Burns stated in a 2009 interview that he initially declined to have his name associated with the software because of his stance to refuse commercial endorsements. However, Apple chief Steve Jobs negotiated to give Burns Apple equipment, which Burns donated to nonprofit organizations.[65]
As a museum retrospective noted, "His PBS specials [are] strikingly out of step with the visual pyrotechnics and frenetic pacing of most reality-based TV programming, relying instead on techniques that are literally decades old, although Burns reintegrates these constituent elements into a wholly new and highly complex textual arrangement."[12]
In a 2011 interview, Burns stated that he admires and is influenced by filmmaker Errol Morris.[66]
Filmography
Conversation with Ken Burns about The Vietnam War. Video by the LBJ Library
12Erickson, Hal (2007). "Ken Burns biography". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 29, 2007. Retrieved September 22, 2011. This single source gives two birthplaces. Under the header list, it reads "Birthplace: Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA." In the prose biography, it reads "Brooklyn-born Ken Burns..."
↑Callimachi, Rukmini (December 2, 2024). "The Land That Allowed Ken Burns to Raise the Dead". The New York Times. Retrieved December 3, 2024. The award-winning filmmaker has slept in the same bedroom for over four decades. He credits his home with allowing him to make the films everyone said he couldn't.
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