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Ken Burns Quotes


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Ken Burns
July 29, 1953 -
Nationality: American
Category: Director
Subcategory: American Director

Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

   

You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

   

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

   

I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.

   

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

   

You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.

   

I grew up certain for a while that I was going to be an anthropologist, until film turned my head.

   

I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge.

   

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

   

A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.

   

One of the things I really like about Ford's films is how there is always a focus on the way characters live, and not just the male heroes.

   

When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things.

   

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.

   

I think the problem with a lot of the fusion music is that it's extremely predictable, it's a rock rhythm and the solos all play the same stuff and they play it over and over again and there's a certain musical virtuosity involved in it.

   

The flame is not out, but it is flickering.

   

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

   

Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say.

   

In most films music is brought in at the end, after the picture is more or less locked, to amplify the emotions the filmmaker wants you to feel.

   

I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.

   

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

   

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