Florentine Films
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Dixieland, swing, bebop, modal, free, avant-garde, these were some of the terms critics used during the 1960s to categorize the diverse manifestations of jazz music. As for the artists themselves, many were desperate for work and headed for Europe, including bebop saxophone master Dexter Gordon. At home, jazz sought relevance. During the Civil Rights struggle it became a voice of protest, while avant-garde explorer John Coltrane reached for a higher...
Pub. Date
[2005], c2002
Language
English
Description
For 17 million Americans, severe, long-term mental illness is a fact of life-a fact little understood by the majority of their fellow citizens. In an effort to raise public awareness of the day-to-day impact mental illness has on families, this intimate documentary profiles Robert Neugeboren and his brother, Jay, as decade after decade they cope with Robert's schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Drawing on Jay's heart-rending yet uplifting family memoir...
Series
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
Ken Burns chronicles the history of a uniquely American art form, rising from the experiences of remarkable people in distinctive regions of the nation. From its roots in ballads, hymns, and the blues to its mainstream popularity, viewers will follow the evolution of country music over the course of the twentieth century as it eventually emerged to become America's music. Features never-before-seen footage and photographs, plus interviews with more...
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick : Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, The Vietnam War, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides -- Americans who...
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Beginning with a searing indictment of slavery, this program dramatically evokes the causes of the war. Here are the burning questions of union and states' rights, John Brown at Harper's Ferry, the election of Abraham Lincoln, the firing on Fort Sumter, and the jubilant rush to arms on both sides. Along the way the war's major figures are introduced: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and a host of lesser-known but...
Pub. Date
[2010]
Language
English
Description
The game of baseball continues to reflect the complicated country that created it. Players and owners wage a battle over money and power; Cal Ripken becomes the game's new Iron Man; sluggers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds do things that have never been done before; the Yankees build a dynasty, while their arch rivals, the Red Sox, stage the greatest comeback in history. In September of 2001, baseball offers the hope that things will one...
Series
Pub. Date
[2012]
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
In the early twentieth century, thousands of homesteaders and "suitcase farmers" converge on the southern Plains, where wet years, rising wheat prices and World War I produce a classic boom. Millions of acres of virgin sod are plowed up. Caroline Henderson stakes her claim in a strip of Oklahoma called No Man's Land, and for a while prosperity seems certain for her and the families of two dozen survivors who provide eyewitness testimony. Then, in...
Pub. Date
[2009]
Language
English
Description
Traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and what Burns believes is the most stunning cinematography in Florentine Films' history, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and...
Pub. Date
[2003]
Language
English
Description
They called themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, but because of their ecstatic dancing, the world called them Shakers. Through diaries, archival photographs, music and stunning cinematography, Ken Burns creates a moving portrait of this group.
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Hemingway, reeling from his split with Martha, attaches himself to the U.S. Army as it moves through Normandy and liberates Paris. After the war he tries to start a new life with Mary Welsh but is beset with personal tragedies and professional mishaps. He publishes The Old Man and the Sea and wins the Nobel Prize but eventually is overcome by addiction, physical trauma and depression.
12) Niagara Falls
Pub. Date
[2006]
Language
English
Description
A study of human achievement and human folly on an epic scale. It is a tale of exploitation and preservation and the changing nature of love in America - of the way Man has related to Nature over centuries.
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
The American Buffalo delves into over 10,000 years of North American history, exploring the evolution and significance of buffalo to Native American people on the Great Plains and highlighting the near-extinction of the American buffalo, driven by factors such as the buffalo robe trade, westward expansion, diseases, and drought. The second episode follows a diverse group, including Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Goodnight, in their efforts to rescue...
Pub. Date
[2004]
Language
English
Description
Tells the story of the most important expedition in American history, led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Includes the stories of the young army men, French-Canadian boatmen, Clark's African-American slave, and the Shoshone woman named Sacagawea who went with them.
Pub. Date
[2003]
Language
English
Description
Horatio Nelson Jackson, an eccentric Vermont doctor, drove from San Francisco to New York City, in 1903 to became the first person to drive an automobile across the continent - a feat never before accomplished. It would mark the beginning of a new era in America and the end of another. It took Lewis & Clark over two years to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific - Horatio went the opposite direction, by means of the "Horseless carriage", in less than...
16) Prohibition
Pub. Date
[2011]
Language
English
Description
This videodisc explores the extraordinary story of what happens when a freedom-loving nation outlaws the sale of intoxicating liquor, and the disastrous unintended consequences that follow. The utterly relevant cautionary tale raises profound questions about the proper role of government and the limits of legislating morality. When the country goes dry in 1920, after a century of debate, millions of law-abiding Americans become lawbreakers overnight....
17) Thomas Jefferson
Pub. Date
2001.
Language
English
Description
Chronicles the life of Thomas Jefferson.
19) Mark Twain
Pub. Date
[2001]
Language
English
Description
Recounts Mark Twain's life told primarily through his own words. Includes interviews with Hal Holbrook, Arthur Miller, William Styron and many others.
20) Baseball
Pub. Date
2004.
Language
English
Description
It is an epic overflowing with heroes and hopefuls, scoundrels and screwballs. It is a saga spanning the quest for racial justice, the clash of labor and management, the transformation of popular culture, and the unfolding of the national pastime. Here is the story of a nation at work and play. Experience it in ten thrilling "innings" from master storyteller and award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns.