press release

"We decided to give the awards to Ken Burns and Ric Burns this year," Nancy Buirski, Full Frame's Executive Director says, "and acknowledge the ways in which they have distinguished themselves by creating and sustaining a mass audience for documentary film. They have popularized the medium by making history accessible to a broad range of viewers and they have done so with films that do not stint on complex characters, nuanced perspectives, or sheer cinematic beauty."

Ken Burns, who has been making films for more than thirty years, was nominated for an Academy Award® in 1981 for Brooklyn Bridge and has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. He is probably best known for his trilogy of epic documentaries, which began with The Civil War, continued with Baseball, and culminated in Jazz. The Civil War, on which Ken Burns and Ric Burns collaborated, was the highest rated series in the history of American Public Television. A watershed moment in the history of documentary, The Civil War broadcast marked the beginning of a widespread interest in documentary film. Approaching his subjects with the fresh eyes and ears of a novice, which imbue his films with the joy and pain of genuine discovery, Ken Burns's films are a testament to the improvisational American spirit, without ever forgetting that race is the crux of our national identity. His most recent film, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson was previewed at Full Frame last year.

Ric Burns is best known for his acclaimed PBS series New York: A Documentary Film. The New York series chronicles the city's rise from a remote Dutch outpost on the far edge of the empire to the cultural and economic center of the world. The eighth and final episode of New York is a remarkable film portrait of the rise and fall of the World Trade Center. In this sophisticated epic, which Variety called "a monumental documentary series that raises the bar for this kind of work and in the process elevates our knowledge and understanding of a metropolis that is still evolving," Ric Burns explores the complex relationships between national identity, cultural difference, and belonging as they have been filtered through the American Dream. Each of Ric Burns's films offers us insight into the American character by tracing the contours of the dreams and nightmares that have motivated and haunted us as a people. In 2002, Full Frame proudly screened the World Premiere of Ric Burns's film, Ansel Adams.

Ken Burns and Ric Burns understand that historical work requires extensive research and acts of imagination — and both have found distinctive ways of stretching the archival image. With their innovative techniques and patient editing, they restore a sense of depth to images while reminding us of all that we cannot see. As a result, the viewer is afforded the opportunity to imagine, rather than watch staged reenactments or digital simulations of historical events.

The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is produced by Doc Arts Inc. a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The presenting sponsors are The New York Times and Duke University.