Emmy Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker
Ric Burns: Biography at a Glance
- Ric Burns is one of America’s preeminent documentary filmmakers who has been writing, directing, and producing historical films for over 25 years.
- Best known for his Emmy Award-winning New York: A Documentary Film, Burns has told the story of America from the Mayflower and the Civil War to 9/11.
- Burns founded Steeplechase Films which has produced over 30 hours of award-winning humanities programming for prime-time national broadcast on public television.
- A profoundly powerful storyteller whose thought-provoking and deeply poetic films have garnered a devoted following, Burns brings to the stage an overview of America and a look at our future — from a historical perspective.
Media
Biography
One of America’s preeminent documentary filmmakers, Ric Burns has been writing, directing, and producing historical films for over 25 years. Best known for his Emmy Award-winning New York: A Documentary Film, Burns has told the story of America from the Mayflower and the Civil War to 9/11.
A profoundly powerful storyteller whose thought-provoking and deeply poetic films have garnered a devoted following, Burns brings to the stage an overview of America, from the pilgrims and the civil war to the ongoing cultural changes, and a look at our future — from a historical perspective. With short film clips interspersed throughout his lectures, Burns also shares the secrets to his creative process with tips on how to tell a compelling story.
The winner of six Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards, Ric has directed some of the most distinguished programs for the award-winning public television series, American Experience and American Masters, including Coney Island, The Donner Party, The Way West, Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, and The Chinese Exclusion Act. According to the New York Times, The Chinese Exclusion Act “feels as if it were made for a moment when border walls and immigration controls are topics of daily conversation.”
Variety called his PBS series New York, “Nothing short of gripping...a monumental documentary series.” TV Guide described the eighth episode — a three-hour portrait of the rise and fall of the World Trade Center — as “a majestically composed eulogy.”
His most recent work, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, explores the riveting and profoundly moving life and work of this unique figure—an old-fashioned polymath and natural historian of the 19th-century sort who redefined our understanding of the brain and mind.
Burns directed American Ballet Theatre: A History; Debt of Honor: Disabled Veterans in American History, and The Pilgrims, which uncovers the riveting, true story of the men and women of the Mayflower and their harrowing first decade in Massachusetts.
Burns created Driving While Black, a look at the long history of African Americans and automobiles, starting as early as the 20th century.
Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Burns completed Death and the Civil War in 2012, which examines the impact of the war’s staggering death toll and its enduring trauma on the nation, the government, and the psyche of the American people.
Beginning with a collaboration with his brother Ken Burns on PBS’s The Civil War, Ric first founded Steeplechase Films in 1989. With over 30 hours of award-winning programming for broadcast on national television, Steeplechase has earned thirteen national Emmy nominations, two Peabody Awards, three Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Journalism awards, and the Erick Barnouw prize from the Organization of American Historians.
Topics
Seeing The Invisible World: The Art Of Filmmaking
We all love films, but what exactly happens between the camera and the screen. How do tricks of light create universes populated by complicated people, glorious images, and immersive sound? Using clips and stories from his own award-winning documentaries, director Ric Burns takes audiences on a journey into the creative process of filmmaking, from script to screen.
“Seeing the Invisible World: The Art of Filmmaking” is a combination of sight and sound. Your audience can be treated to clips from The Civil War, New York, The Way West, Coney Island, The Donner Party, Andy Warhol, Eugene O’Neill, Ansel Adams, The Pilgrims, Death and the Civil War, Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, and more.
One of America’s preeminent documentary filmmakers, Ric Burns is a profoundly powerful storyteller whose thought-provoking and deeply poetic films have garnered a devoted following. Best known for his Emmy Award-winning New York: A Documentary Film, Burns has told the story of America through his movies, from the Mayflower and the Civil War to 9/11.
New York: Capitalism, Democracy And The Culture Of Change
Capital of capitalism, birthplace of democracy, cauldron of the modern world: for nearly four hundred years now, New York City has been the premier urban laboratory and unofficial capital of the American dream. From its establishment in 1624 as a remote Dutch trading post, down through its emergence in the 20th century as the undisputed cultural and economic clearinghouse of the world, New York City has played a unique, and uniquely transformative, role in the development of American culture, mingling and unleashing the extraordinarily powerful and transforming forces of capitalism and democracy as no other city on earth. Walking through four hundred years of history, from the arrival of the Dutch down past the catastrophe of 9/11, Ric Burns discusses the salient forces that have driven New York upward, and made it the complex center of the modern world.
What History Tells Us About The Present
The Making Of America: From The Pilgrims And Tecumseh To The Civil War
Celebrating The Creative Spirit: Andy Warhol, Eugene O’Neill, And Oliver Sacks
