Friday, March 30, 2007

Ken Burns' Anti-Latino Agenda

From The Unapologetic Mexican:
Now, Ken Burns, famous "documentary" filmmaker is doing his part as a good American soldier of media, to insure that the future thinks even less of us.

KEN BURNS is a documentary filmmaker who has a lot of cred, and chances are good that you've seen his work. If you use Macintosh's iMovie (or if you've seen any documentary these days that uses still shots as part of its presentation), you are familiar with what is named the "Ken Burns Effect," an editing technique made ubiquitous by his documentaries.

When it comes to American documentary filmmaking, Ken Burns is an institution, frequently hailed as “the most accomplished documentary filmmaker of his generation,” or some other such thing. And I am not denying his chops. (Nor his very disarming and Opie-like aura of amiability!) The man can wield a mean editing decision, script, and shotlist. Ultimately, his presentations are engaging and very well-received, mainstreamed, and most important to this essay—considered fact.

The PBS site tells us that "for over 25 years, Ken Burns has been producing films that are unafraid of controversy and tragedy." And I would have to agree. Because his latest seven-part, fourteen hour film The War, an epic undertaking that took six years to make and that covers the second world war by interviewing forty veterans from four towns—one of them Sacramento, California—and does not include even one Mexican (or Puerto Rican, or Native American, or Latino at all) is a tragedy, when it comes to respecting an accurate history, or the contributions of the descendants of the Indigenous of these Americas.