TV Documentary and Official Culture

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TV Documentaryand Official Culture
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TV Documentary gt Ken Burns

• Example of traditional documentary filmmaking
• Makes quality, high-budget films for U.S. public
  TV channel - PBS
• Popularized his signature style of documentary
  filmmaking - he uses cinematic techniques that
  animate photographs (zoom, pan, etc.) and letters
  (pan, voiceover) to create a historical narrative
• Traditional narrative style
• Films explore historical topics that are already
  popular - Civil War, Jazz, etc.
• Does not challenge the prevailing historical
  interpretations

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TV Documentary gt Ken Burns, The Civil War (1990)
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TV Documentary gt On his website ,Burns teaches
the audience how to combine photographs and
voiceover in a film
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TV Documentary gt The Valor and the Horror

• Filmmakers use actors to perform letters and
  autobiographical accounts
• Filmmakers chose to portray both the
  Canadian/Allied and the German point of view of
  the war
• The Bomber Command episode was the most
  controversial because it emphasized participation
  of Canadian fighter pilots in the bombing of
  German civilians during the war.

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TV Documentary gt Graham Carr, Rules of
Engagement

• Veterans - eyewitness authority
• Professional historians - expert authority
• The general public - civic authority?
• Each group claimed to have access to the truth
• What kind of lessons public historians can learn
  from this debate?