Documentary maestro Ken Burns: the five films that made me

Ken Burns, arguably one of the finest documentary film-makers, is best known for his epic documentaries The Civil War (1990, ten hours); Baseball (1994, more than 18 hours), Jazz (2001, 19 hours) and The War (2007, 14 hours). His chronicling of American history has won the 71-year-old director 15 Emmy awards, while his panning and zooming technique was immortalised by Apple with the Ken Burns editing option, which you may have used or seen on a screensaver or slideshow. Here he reveals the five documentaries that made him.
I was in Hampshire College in September 1971 and began studying with photographers who were changing how I looked at the world. Night Mail, a British documentary directed and produced by Harry Watt and narrated by the great documentary film-maker John Grierson, is the story of a night train that takes the mail from London to Edinburgh. I was just blown away by how the simplicity of the film was so impactful; how it captured the moving image — and by extension everyday life — in such a powerful way, reminding me of what the French Lumière brothers had done with their 1896 film about a moving train and the impact it had on audiences. Night Mail was visual poetry the likes of which I had never seen before. I’ve returned to it often.
This film by Frederick Wiseman and John Marshall is about the patient-inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. I first saw it in a class while at Hampshire College in the early 1970s. The film was so raw, so real, that it was banned for a period in Massachusetts. It was notorious, controversial and disturbing. It completely changed how I thought about the power of film at an emotional level.
• The eight best documentary films to watch now
I also saw this film, by the great film-maker Perry Miller Adato, at Hampshire College. The film is about the life of Gertrude Stein and her circle of artist friends in Paris. Perry, whom I got to know later, had actors read the first-person voices on stage. At one point she cut away and you could hear the voices above the archival footage and it was a revelation — the idea that you could break from a third-person narrative to a chorus of people providing first-person voices of those long gone, which allowed you to bring life to still images. That moment gave birth to everything I’ve done since. I let her know that later when we met and still try to honour her.
Werner, who is a dear friend, made his name doing feature films in the 1970s as part of the German New Wave but later turned to documentaries and has continued to make films — strange, unusual stories — that explore what he refers to as “ecstatic truth”. Our work couldn’t be more different. He “violates”, in the best sense of the word, every imposed law I have about historical film-making. He finds subjects like Grizzly Man (2005, buy/rent) or Lessons of Darkness (1992, YouTube) that allow him to tell a story and dig deep into the very meaning of human nature. His films are vivid, operatic works of film-making. Just spin the dial, throw a dart and watch the first one you find.
The German film-maker Wim Wenders is also more known for his feature films, but Pina, his 3D documentary about the German choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch, is a remarkable piece of work and perhaps my favourite documentary. I saw it in 2011 at the Telluride Film Festival. Everything about this film is perfectly crafted, the way he presented her work on stage and out in the world, the people who were selected to speak about her, how it was edited. It’s like an atom bomb, the smashing of one art form — cinema — with another — dance — and creating something completely new. I don’t think ecstasy is a strong enough word to describe the experience of watching this film. It is one of the great works of art of this century.
Ken Burns’s documentaries are free to view on the PBS America app on Freeview Play and Amazon Fire
What are your favourite documentaries? Let us know in the comments below