Florentine Films
Description
Explore the history of a uniquely American art form: country music. From its deep and tangled roots in ballads, blues and hymns performed in small settings, to its worldwide popularity, learn how country music evolved over the course of the 20th century, as it eventually emerged to become America’s music. COUNTRY MUSIC features never-before-seen footage and photographs, plus interviews with more than 80 country music artists. The eight-part series...
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 fought...
Author
Description
By April of 1944, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt have occupied the White House for more than eleven years. The President is secretly convalescing in South Carolina from a recently diagnosed bout of congestive heart failure while the war rages overseas and his family is under press scrutiny at home. Despite his failing health, FDR has ambitious postwar plans for his country: to see the horrific struggle through to victory, and then to bring the United...
4) Jazz
Description
Documentary exploring the history of jazz from its beginnings through the 1990's, including the stories of many of its creators and performers. Includes archival video, still photographs, historical performances, and newly recorded interviews and musical performances.
Description
"At the tiny Greenwood School in the small New England town of Putney, Vermont, its roughly 50 students, boys from the ages 11 to 17 are asked each year to memorize the Gettysburg Address. This would be a daunting assignment for any student, but the boys at Greenwood all suffer from learning differences that have made their personal, academic and social progress extremely challenging. As the students come to terms with the address's simple message...
Description
"Explores nearly 200 years of Deaf life in America and presents a broad range of perspectives on what it means to be deaf. The film is propelled by the stories of people, both eminent and ordinary, and sheds light on events that have shaped Deaf lives: the creation of schools for deaf students; the debate about American Sign Language; the campaign for deaf-friendly telephone, the TTY; the fight for a deaf president at Gallaudet University; and some...
Description
The dramatic story of America’s national mammal, which sustained the lives of Native people for untold generations, being driven to the brink of extinction, before an unlikely collection of people rescues it from disappearing forever. Ken Burns recounts the tragic collision of two opposing views of the natural world––and the unforgettable characters who pointed the nation in a different direction.
10) Mark Twain
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Recounts Mark Twain's life told primarily through his own words. Includes interviews with Hal Holbrook, Arthur Miller, William Styron and many others.
Description
Presents the history of women's suffrage in the United States through the dramatic, often turbulent friendship of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony. Part 1 covers the years from their youth up to the establishment of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1868. Part 2 spans the period from 1868 to the passage in 1919 of the 19th amendment to the Constitution which gave women the vote.
13) The War of 1812
Description
A two-hour documentary looking at this important historic event from several perspectives, the American, Canadian, British and Native American. The program will have some limited but very well done reenactments and major historians, authors, and experts.
14) Hemingway
Description
Examine the visionary work and turbulent life of one of the greatest and most influential American writers: Ernest Hemingway. Intimate and insightful, the series weaves together Hemingway's biography with excerpts from his work. The film penetrates the myth of Hemingway to reveal a deeply troubled and ultimately tragic figure.
15) Prohibition
Description
Prohibition is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating...
Description
Filmmaker Ken Burns invited some of country music's finest artists to gather at Ryman Auditorium to celebrate the launch of his PBS series Country Music. Burns curated an evening of selected highlights from the series combined with performances of the music's iconic songs by some of country's finest artists including Dierks Bentley, Rosanne Cash, Vince Gill, Kathy Mattea, Marty Stuart, and more. The evening is a musical journey tracing the evolution...
17) Baseball
Description
The complete Emmy Award-winning story of America's national pastime from master storyteller Ken Burns is now fully restored in high definition! Baseball spans the quest for racial justice, the clash of labor and management, the immigrant experience, the transformation of popular culture and the enduring appeal of the national pastime.
18) Muhammad Ali
Description
Examines the life of Muhammad Ali in and out of the boxing ring, covering his ties with the Nation of Islam, his political postions, including his refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his role as a symbol of Black masculinity, and life after boxing.
Description
By the end of the 19th century, widespread industrialization has left many Americans worried about whether the country will have any pristine land left. At the same time, poachers in the parks are rampant, and visitors think nothing of littering or carving their names near iconic sites like Old Faithful. Congress has yet to establish clear judicial authority or appropriations for the protection of the parks. This sparks a conservation movement by...
Description
Jack Johnson — the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century — enters the ring once again in January 2005 when PBS airs Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a provocative new PBS documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns. The two-part film airs on PBS Monday-Tuesday January 17-18, 2005, 9:00-11:00 p.m....

