The name Ken Burns has become synonymous with some of public television’s biggest blockbuster documentaries.
The Civil War. Baseball. Jazz. The National Parks. This Sunday night on KCPT and PBS stations around the country, watch Ken Burn’s latest documentary epic, The Dust Bowl, a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us–a lesson we ignore at our peril.
You can watch the first installment of Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl this Sunday night at 7 p.m. here on KCPT. One of our metro’s most knowledgeable experts on that slice of our nation’s history, Professor Jay Antle, who is executive director of the sustainability center at Johnson County Community College, sat down with Randy Mason to give a local perspective on The Dust Bowl and to talk about what it means for us today.
Survey the causes of the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. See vivid interviews with 26 survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom-seen movie footage, that bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible perseverance. The documentary is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us — a lesson we ignore at our peril.
Ken Burns will be on:
• The Colbert Report: November 12, 2012
• FOX Business Network TV: Ken will do a live, in-studio segment on November 13, 2012
• Morning Joe: interview scheduled for November 16, 2012
The Great Plow Up – Part One, Sunday, November 18 @ 7 & 9pm
In the first episode of Ken Burns’s THE DUST BOWL, feel the full force of the worst manmade environmental disaster in America’s history as survivors recall the terror of the dust storms, the desperation of hungry families and how they managed to find hope even as the earth and heavens seemed to turn against them.
Reaping the Whirlwind – Part Two, Monday, November 19 @ 7 & 9pm
In the second episode of Ken Burns’s DUST BOWL, experience the gradual relief as the families of the plains seek new lives in California and government conservation efforts — and a break in the drought in 1939 — eventually stabilize the soil and bring the farms back to life, but with dangers of another Dust Bowl facing future generations.
THE WAR, a seven-part documentary series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, explores the history and horror of the Second World War from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who become caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history.
Six years in the making, this epic 15-hour film focuses on the stories of citizens from four geographically distributed American towns — Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and the tiny farming town of Luverne, Minnesota. These four communities stand in for — and could represent — any town in the United States that went through the war’s four devastating years. Individuals from each community take the viewer through their own personal and quite often harrowing journeys into war, painting vivid portraits of how the war dramatically altered their lives and those of their neighbors, as well as the country they helped to save for generations to come.
THE WAR, a seven-part documentary series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, explores the history and horror of the Second World War from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who become caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history.
Six years in the making, this epic 15-hour film focuses on the stories of citizens from four geographically distributed American towns — Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and the tiny farming town of Luverne, Minnesota. These four communities stand in for — and could represent — any town in the United States that went through the war’s four devastating years. Individuals from each community take the viewer through their own personal and quite often harrowing journeys into war, painting vivid portraits of how the war dramatically altered their lives and those of their neighbors, as well as the country they helped to save for generations to come.
Watch Saturday, May 26, 2012.
Part 1: A Necessary War – December 1941-December 1942 at 1pm
Part 2: When Things Get Tough – January 1943-December 1943 at 3:30pm
Part 3: A Deadly Calling – November 1943-June 1944 at 5:30pm
Part 4: Pride of Our Nation – June 1944-August 1944 at 7:30pm
Watch Sunday, May 27, 2012.
Part 5: FUBAR – September 1944-December 1944 at 12:30pm
Part 6: The Ghost Front – December 1944-March 1945 at 3pm
Part 7: A World Without War – March 1945-September 1945 at 5pm
