The families, the rooz veez roo roosevelts. Ken, why have you decided to deal with a very important part of that era . People ask me how do i choose my projects and this one chose me. I live in a tiny town in rural New Hampshire, putney, vermont, greenwood school, they asked me to be a judge at this gettysburg recitation event. I literally wept. I thought, somebody should make a film on this but that would be cinema verite. Finally, with the 150th approaching, i just said, we got to do this, i got to put my money where my mouth is. We had to make a film about this heroic struggle of these boys. We had a larger programmaticking true program maticstruggling. If we can do it we can tape it too. You can tape the gettysburg address to your mirror and curse me but youll get it. If you go on you can see the thousands of designatio citizene uploaded their renditions. Youve got actors, five living president s, all sorts of people. Fourscore and seven years ago. Our fathers brought forth on this continent. Conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war. Why do you think its so important for people to go back and memorize the address . We have lost something, we have lost our educational mojo. We stopped asking people to memorize stuff. It was rote and bad ant not good. The effort of memorization, there was a sense of accomplishment. For the boys at the school its like a talisman. History is a table upon which we can still have a social discourse. We have bill oreilly and nancy pelosi and all the five living president s contributing to this. Do they see eye to eye on Current Events . No, of course not. But the gettysburg address is a place to begin, to restore the civil discourse, to appeal to the better angels of our nature, Abraham Lincoln himself would say. And to repair the things weve lost in our educational system and the things we share in common. Thats what the gettysburg address is. And its impossible t not to agree with everything lincoln said, the beauty of his words resonate. This is doubling down on the hypocrisy, on the jeffersons declaration that we hold these truths to be se selfevident, that all men are created equal, he owned over 200 slaves. We have a new birth of freedom. The first sentence he talks about if past, the second sentence he talks about the present, and hes willing us, begging us to enter a future and its the operating system, the 2. 0 that we operate under now. Where democracy will not perish from the earth. Lets look at the process the boys go through at the putney school. Our feargts are dedicated to the fathers are dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. It ends up being a lot of work for a lot of them but all have tremendous effects. It is. They all form from some learning difference, dyslexia disgraphia, a whole alfabt alphabet soup of things. They are scared to have public recitation. Some have language difficulties that make it hard to memorize or other. It is a boarding school for kids who should still be at home but held together by the loving kindness of the people at the school. They emerge from their struggling and its such struggles and its such a loving admiration that emerges. Lets hear it. We here highly resolve that these dead should not have died in vein. And a new birth of freedom that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. [cheering and applause] so that is beautiful max. I took that with my smartphone because i realize we were covering the parental reactions while they were giving the address. But when i saw him coming back and id known that max had not had knew the speech cold but was terrified about doing it in public. And an hour before he wasnt going to do it. And he did it. And he did it mag nife magnificd sort of melted into his mother. In all the exultations was amazing for you to see. It was amazing. You are now going back to what we love so much for so yes. With the roosevelts. Thats your next project, from the birth of Teddy Roosevelt to the are dead of eleanor, who was a niece to Franklin Roosevelt who was a fifth cousin. Has more affect than any other family, ill defend that to the end. This is a very complicated family drama, an american downton 18. Abbey. About 3 extraordinary people, whose stories are timeless. What are we debating . What is the role of government, what can a citizen expect from government . How does character form leadership, how does adversity form character later in life and how does that form to leadership skills . These are the central questions of the roosevelts and the interplay of, after franklin was stricken with polio is one of the Great American stories. I think we focus too much on the outer stuff. Its all there, the two world wars, the depression, everything thats going on but from an intimate point of view. Having spent time with Franklin Delano roosevelt i know you said lincoln is our greatest president pop music and baseball and the presidency, besides george washington, besides babe ruth besides the beatles are its sort of that, itss for second place. Lincoln has always been the greatest president in my mind but now roosevelt has competed with him because of empathy leadership and owe opacity. This is not an uncritical roosevelts. Did you ever think that Many Americans would be interested in watching something that happened 130 years before . The civil war is the most important happening in the united states. There is a saying that if you are having a bad season, you put out a civil war book. There is a pent up curiosity about the civil war. I had put it in the can. They said its terrific, nobodys going to watch that. Even Stephen Bochco has this story called pop rocks, and by the way, were in an mtv generation and nobody has that attention span. Well, it turns out were all starved for meaning. We all know that real meaning, gaston meanin significant meaning accrues. Netflix and people are binging. It was flashy video and graphics and cable news, short sound bites. Attention spans get shorter and shorter. Were in the editing room and using these news pieces, im here such and such and speaking to somebody, and that person speaks for a minute. Now im hearing somebody, and that person speaks for two seconds. Then they tell you what they said. Im worried if lincoln did the gettysburg address, today. Some politician would say, lincoln just tried to distract us from his miserable campaign out west. Theres so much written about our historical literacy and how its not being taught well about how people dont know much about their history so there is a certain dichotomy here that youve been so successful in telling the stories of our past. It tells you that theres pentup demand, there is hunger, curiosity, we all can look at nice u tube things of kittens and balls of string. But we need longerform things. What do you tell them . When we got rid of memorization we also got rid of narrative. The word history which for some people, means castor oil, something you hold your nose over, its not good tasting. But history is made mostly about story. The series ive done, documentaries, same laws apply, its story, story telling, if youve got a good story youve got them there. If its a kid seven or eight years old, and hasnt really because of how theyve grown up because of television or video games or whatever, doesnt have the visceral connection with the greatest man made invention which is the book, it might take a clip of the civil war and all of a sudden youve made a student of them, and theyre going back to the book. This is talk to al jazeera. Youre watching talk to al jazeera. Im antonio mora. My guest this week documentary film maker ken burns. What is your view of history . It seems to me you toe kind of a middle ground between those who believe in the ultrapatriotic great man theory of history and more leftist that might look at a more Popular History and looks at the evils of the past. I think youve hit the nail on the head. For a long time weve told about the history of great men, capital g capital m. It was president s and wars in general. Then we threw that out and replaced it with an equally fraudulent set, that American History was a history of european crimes. But theres a middle ground and thats an important thing. Its not some pablum that is mediocre, it is passionate but it understands, you can know about lincoln but lets learn about a southern ingredient and a northern grunt and have them meet in the middle. Thats the way weve tried to tell history. The other thing is too often we want to make something thats so critical that we throw the baby know . In order to elevate one president we have to demean another. You dont have to do that. You dont have to make people wrong in that regard. The histories we tell are unafraid of controversy and tragedy but equally, an abiding faith in the human spirit and a unique role of this remarkable but also dysfunctional republic, plays in the positive man kind. Thats my mantra. Then people come and say wow and you hear it from all sides of the political spectrum. All regions of the country. And thats a good thing where you can have a table as i said before where we can have a conversation around. And thats American History. And the other huge point about that is that theyre not cycles of history, i dont believe in that. I dont even think we are condemned to repeat what we dont remember. I think thats a lovely phrase but thats not true. I think human nature remains the same. You study the past and you study yourself in the present too. Is that where your love of history comes from . I know your mom died when you were 11, she was sick pretty much since you were a toddler. I know youre quoted as saying, your whole work is an attempt to make people long gone come back to life. He said you wake the dead. I have been disturbed that my i could not remember the date of my mothers death. It always kept coming and then recreeding an receding and he said i bet you kept blowing out your candles wishing her to come back. I said yes i do, what make you say that . He says you keep letting people reappear. It permitted me to have that close your with my mom. I have not now in 25 years forgotten her birthday, her death day and be able to memorialize her. I have had things change. Ive matured in a way but the passion for waking the dead, not holding that old photograph at arms length but to get inside it, hear it, examine it, hear it, has not gone away. Nor has the exploration of the past, an honest and complicated exploration of the past is incredibly hopeful guide to what were doing now. Youve covered great events, civil war, world war ii the world series and Jackie Robinson asking who are we, what comes back from these projects are familiar themes. The first is obvious, about freedom. The nature of personal and collective freedoms and the tensions between those pol polarities. Race is always a dynamic. Theres tensions between labor and management. Theres stories of immigration. Theres women. Theres all sorts of powerful themes that sort of compel almost all the stories in American History and you know i dont go looking for it. Im not looking to say, there is the racial dimension. If you scratch the surface and say, im not interested in the superficialsuperficial themes o, youll go wrong all the time. Do you have a preference . No. For a long time i loved the postcivil war era. I live in a beautiful village in new england. If i could take antibiotics i would love to go back to then. But when made a film called the central park 5. We updated our are baseball series, came out in 2010. But ive spent more time i think in the 20s and 30s and 40s inner other period because baseball went through there, and prohibition went through the 20s. The interesting thing say the 1920s is ive gone through it so many times and its always a different 20s because its so great. Today with our convention at wisdom, we know what the 20s is, its the jazz age, its something else. Ththe 20 s i went through with the dust bowl is a different from the jazz age. Believe it or not our future is pretty well laid out. Were going to leave work and go home. But the past as a malleablity of it. You ask a question about one day and you get a totally different answer. Then it proves the point that the past becomes the greatest armor to face that future. Because youve been through the vicissitudes of the past. You know what people have suffered. You know what real leadership is. You can recognize it when you see it here when people say oh we have no heroes anymore. I go oh thats crazy, theyre all around us but with what is your litmus test of heroism . It is perfectionism. We get the word hero from the greeks, they are interested in their strengths but their equal and obvious flaws. Another interestings thing you do in your body of work is you have a tremendous variety of scope of the things you are expressing. The civil war, epic. Big things. Big things. The guy who just horatio or the brooklyn bridge. The english poet William Blake said you could find the world in a grain of sand and that is sort of in a way an atom looks like our solar system, its the idea by describing the moment you can reflect all moments. Sometimes you have to take those big subjects and then when you treat them what do you do . Its not just lincoln you go down to that private, right . You have that thing but sometimes just looking at that private, we look at the whole history of world war ii, focusing on individuals from four geographically distribute american towns, mobile, alabama, sacramento california, are luverne minnesota that was a way to do, european and american theaters which no one ever does. Youre watching talk to al jazeera. This is talk to al jazeera. Im with ken burns and weve been talking about his films including his latest documentary the address. Brought up the future, you are the future. Now theres a ken burns act. I think what happened is, wired magazine said if you would warrant to look at all of my films, it would take you five days and three quarters to get through them. We were thinking, nowadays wouldnt it be great to cure eightatesome of the themes we we talking about curate some of the things we were talking about, some of the things that happen in American History and take clips and arrange like play lists, moments in the films two, three minutes long. And it makes for a kind of credit initial immersion into my body of work without having to spend five and three quarters days and nights watching everything. But it will say wow, this happened, and i see the interrelationships of things. That warp and woof of history. That fabric of time and the way these themes interrelate. And the sense of the from fromimposition of events. From the inconvenient thing that none of us are getting out of this alive. None of us. Even though we think theres an exception, none of it is going to happen. We invent history and religion and art and all sorts of things to superimpose. Most of all we invent stories, how was your day . And then we tell what happens and we take the random chaoticness of things and we say, here is the frame around it. Here is my story. And thats what human beings do every single do. And the app is an attempt to sort of say let me take all the stuff weve done and curate seven or eight little mixed tapes that we enjoy. You have been referred to as the most influential historian of all time, or film maker of all time. How do you take all this . I live in a little New Hampshire town where all of that gets you a cup of coffee. Rather than the number of emmys and oscar nominations. Its very nice when people get you awards or people tell you youre this or that, Stephen Ambrose says more americans get their history from me, if you tell a story, a good story is a good story is a good story and thats what i care about. We all look forward to hearing them. Thank you for coming. My pleasure. Audiences are intelligent and they know that their needs are not being met by american tv news today. Entire media culture is driven by something thats very very fast. There has been a lack of fact based, in depth, serious journalism, and we fill that void. There is a huge opportunity for Al Jazeera America to change the way people look at news. We just dont parachute in on a story. Quickly talk to a couple of experts and leave. One producer may spend 3 or 4 months, digging into a single story. At al jazeera, there are resources to alow us as journalists to go in depth and produce the kind of films. The people that you dont see anywhere else on television. We intend to reach out to the people who arent being heard. We wanna see the people who are actually effected by the news of the day. Its Digging Deeper its asking that second, that third question, finding that person no one spoken to yet. You cant tell the stories of the people if you dont get their voices out there, and Al Jazeera America is doing just that. A this is Al Jazeera America. Im jonathan betz, live in new york. Shots fired in ukraine, gunmen taking over police station, a phase and a warning from america. Another deadly gas attack in syria haunting scenes, dozens sickened. Details on the fiery bus crash. The fed ex
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