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Ken Burns volume 1
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English
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In an immersive 360-degree narrative, Burns and Novick tell the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. The Vietnam War features testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides. Six years in the making, the series brings the war and the chaotic epoch it encompassed viscerally...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 8
Language
English
Description
Jazz becomes the official symbol of American democracy abroad. At home, the music splinters into different camps: white and black, cool and hot, East and West, traditional and modern. Television supplants radio, but offers fewer opportunities for jazz to be heard. Most big bands are forced to dismantle. The rhythm and blues phenomenon further erodes the audience for jazz. Charlie Parker dies of pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver at age 34; Dizzy...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 1
Language
English
Description
Jazz is born in the unique musical and social cauldron of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, emerging from several forms of music, including ragtime, marching bands, work songs, spirituals, European classical music, funeral parade music and, above all, the blues. Musicians who advance early jazz in New Orleans include Creole pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton, cornetist Buddy Bolden and clarinet prodigy Sidney Bechet. Composer W.C....
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Series
Language
English
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This award-winning film by Ken Burns recaptures the drama, struggles, and personal tragedies behind the greatest of all achievements of America's industrial age, THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. Largest bridge of the era, its construction entailed enormous problems and ingenious solutions. Witness the human heroics behind the bridge that seized America's imagination in the 1880s. Discover the enduring charm and beauty of a granite-and-steel masterpiece.
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 3
Language
English
Description
Louis Armstrong arrives in New York from Chicago where, during a brief stay with the Fletcher Henderson band, he amazes his fellow musicians and teaches the city to swing. A blues craze, spearheaded by Bessie Smith, takes the nation by storm. Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, the first great white jazz artist, eventually plays for bandleader Paul Whiteman, whose blending of classical and jazz traditions comes to epitomize jazz for many Americans. This episode...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 9
Language
English
Description
As rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll erode jazz' audience still further, the music nonetheless enjoys a time of tremendous creativity. Saxophonist Sonny Rollins makes his mark on the scene, Duke Ellington reemerges as a star after a triumphant performance at the Newport Jazz Festival and Miles Davis makes several now-legendary albums. Young trumpeter Clifford Brown achieves great artistry, but his life is cut short in a car accident. Vocalist Sarah...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 2
Language
English
Description
The second episode is set during the tumultuous era known as the "Jazz Age," when the rhythms and spirit of jazz music mirror the world that emerged in the wake of World War I. The program introduces two extraordinary individuals whose lives will be interwoven throughout the rest of the series: the brilliant bandleader and composer Duke Ellington and the virtuoso New Orleans-born cornetist Louis Armstrong, who single-handedly transforms jazz from...
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Series
Language
English
Description
This new film from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park in 1989. The film chronicles the Central Park jogger case, for the first time from the perspective of the five young men whose lives were upended by this miscarriage of justice.
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 4
Language
English
Description
Amid the hard times of the Depression, a new dance, the Lindy Hop, begins to catch on at the dance halls of New York. The reminiscences of two of Harlem's greatest dancers, Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, help frame this episode. Louis Armstrong begins to sing on stage; though his career suffers from a string of bad luck, his trumpet playing and singing continue to astonish listeners. Duke Ellington's band begins to appear in Hollywood films, and...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 7
Language
English
Description
The infectious music of the swing bands sets the mood for soldiers going off to fight in World War II. Gifted trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, in after-hours jam sessions with other young rebels, including the drummer Kenny Clarke and pianist Thelonious Monk, take jazz in startling new directions with their complex music--bebop. Their innovations, however, are largely unnoticed amidst the war effort. Armed Forces Radio...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 5
Language
English
Description
Big band jazz, "swing," becomes the most popular music in America. Clarinetist Benny Goodman, whose band creates a sensation on radio broadcasts and in live performances, becomes the first white bandleader to hire black musicians and presents the first integrated public performances of jazz. Billie Holiday's buoyant music and exquisite phrasing enable her to overcome a limited range as a singer. Louis Armstrong lands roles in Hollywood films, and...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 2
Language
English
Description
Discover the true story of America's “Great Experiment” — the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing alcohol — in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's PROHIBITION. In 1920, Prohibition goes into effect, making it illegal to manufacture, transport or sell intoxicating liquor. This episode examines the problems of enforcement, as millions of law-abiding Americans become lawbreakers overnight. While a significant portion of the country is...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 3
Language
English
Description
Discover the true story of America's “Great Experiment” — the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing alcohol — in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's PROHIBITION.Support for Prohibition diminishes in the mid-1920s as the playfulness of sneaking around for a drink gives way to disenchantment with its glaring unintended consequences. By criminalizing one of the nation's largest industries, the law has given savvy gangsters a way to make huge...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 1
Language
English
Description
Discover the true story of America's “Great Experiment.” Go beyond the oft-told tales of gangsters, rum-runners, flappers and speakeasies to experience the rise, rule and fall of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's PROHIBITION. Since the early years of the American Republic, alcohol has been embedded in the fabric of American culture. But by 1830, the average American over 15 years old consumes nearly seven...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 6
Language
English
Description
As the Great Depression deepens, jazz thrives. The saxophone emerges as an iconic instrument of the music; the episode introduces two of its masters, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Young migrates to Kansas City, where a vibrant music scene is prospering. Out of this ferment emerges pianist Count Basie, who forms a band that epitomizes the Kansas City sound. With the help of John Hammond, Basie takes his band to New York, where his remarkable rhythm...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 10
Language
English
Description
In the 1960s, jazz becomes divided into "schools" -- Dixieland, swing, bop, hard bop, cool, modal, free, avant-garde. The question of what is jazz and what isn't rages, dividing audiences, dividing musicians, dividing generations. For many, the real question is whether jazz, the most American of art forms, will survive at all. Rock 'n' roll groups dominate record sales and radio, and many jazz musicians, like Dexter Gordon, are forced to leave America...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 1
Language
English
Description
As one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson is considered by some to be the man of the millennium, analogous to the progress of the first 200 years of American history. He was a man of freedom and expansion, yet he had the restraint that is necessary to succeed with that freedom--the commitment to becoming learned and skilled. As the third president of the United States, Jefferson was responsible for doubling the size of the country with...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
From Ken Burns, producer of THE CIVIL WAR, comes the story of radio's creation of radio and three men of genius, vision, and determination: Lee De Forest, a clergyman's flamboyant son; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the world's most powerful communications company. This film evokes the lives of three men whose work profoundly transformed modern America.
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 2
Language
English
Description
Thomas Jefferson is by most accounts the most admired and greatest figure in American history. However, he was a man whose behavior in many ways contradicted his public declarations. He supported resistance and revolution in America and France, yet was not a charismatic politician or front-line soldier. His eloquence was immortalized in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that "All men are created equal." He disapproved of the slave trade,...
Author
Series
Ken Burns volume 2
Language
English
Description
Ken Burns explores the other side of the writer - an American icon who, through tragedy and bad financial decisions, falls hard with failure. In contrast to the wildly successful Twain, Clemens is an inept businessman who squanders his fortunes on pipe dream patents and bad investments. Clemens turns to the lecture circuit and tours extensively, leaving behind his beloved Hartford home and, often, his family, to pay off his creditors.
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