Ken Burns on ‘Waking the Dead,’ Cutting Trump-Era Echoes and Why His Obama Film Can Wait
Ken Burns told the Edinburgh International Film Festival that his documentaries aim to “wake the dead” by bringing historical voices and images vividly back to life. Discussing his forthcoming series “The American Revolution”, he said he avoids sentimentality and resists forcing present-day political arguments onto the past, preferring viewers to recognise historical parallels themselves.
The six-part, 12-hour series uses around 400 first-person accounts performed by 61 actors, including Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Damian Lewis, Tobias Menzies and Matthew Rhys. Burns described his method as “emotional archaeology”, using cinematic movement and reconstructed sound around still photographs to make historical material feel immediate; he linked this impulse to the death of his mother when he was 11.
- Burns discusses reviving history through documentary filmmaking.
- His Revolution series spans six parts and 12 hours.
- He avoids imposing modern politics on historical stories.
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Ken Burns is an American documentary-maker best known for long television series about US history, including films on the Civil War, jazz, baseball and the Vietnam War. His work often uses archive photographs, letters, music and narration to tell stories over many hours.
The American Revolution was the conflict in which thirteen British colonies in North America broke away from Britain and became the United States, beginning in 1775. It remains central to American political identity, partly because it raised enduring questions about power, representation, slavery and who was included in the new country.