Famed American filmmaker Ken Burns to visit Tulane

Prominent American filmmaker Ken Burns will visit Tulane University on Friday, March 29, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Tulane professor of history Walter Isaacson will moderate a dialogue with Burns, which will include clips of Burns’ groundbreaking works and a discussion of the people and events that molded America’s history. A question-and-answer session will follow the discussion. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Kendall Cram Room on the second floor of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life, which is located on Tulane’s uptown campus.

“Ken Burns is perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time,” Isaacson said. “His documentaries about the history of our country and the individuals who paved the way are unparalleled. Ken’s work has reshaped the way we look at history.”

Burns has been making documentaries for more than 40 years, and his films have received dozens of major awards, including 16 Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. In September 2008, Burns was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

“Ken Burns is perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.”

- Walter Isaacson

Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Burns has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The Statue of Liberty; Huey Long; Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery; Frank Lloyd Wright; Mark Twain; Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; Jackie Robinson; Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War; The Vietnam War, and, most recently, The Mayo Clinic: Faith - Hope - Science.

Future film projects include country music, Ernest Hemingway, Muhammad Ali, the Holocaust and the United States, Benjamin Franklin, Lyndon B. Johnson, the American buffalo, Leonardo da Vinci, the American Revolution, the history of crime and punishment in America, the history of Reconstruction, and Winston Churchill, among others.