Award-winning documentary filmmaker, director and producer Ken Burns spoke in Sarasota Monday about how funding cuts affect filmmakers like him, and how history lends context to current events.
The government's recent cuts to public broadcasting, by rescinding money in 2025 that had been allocated by Congress, affected him and his work, Burns told reporters at the event at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center.
"I know for me, I lost maybe $14 million. Four million that was in sort of already contracted stuff, which I think I might still get, and then another 10 million that we were in discussion for,” Burns said.
“I think I'll do okay. I'll just redouble the effort. I'm worried about that new filmmaker coming up and what their chances are of being able to succeed,” he said.
“I think that the decision is going to harm the rural stations, both PBS and NPR, more than anything else, and create news deserts in places where we're the only signal. And I think that's a terrible, terrible consequence to come in a democracy in which you're really looking forward to people throwing fastballs straight down the middle of the plate and telling it as it is, calling balls and strikes,” Burns added.
He urged more people to donate to public media.
"My objective would be to try to convince the single digit percentage of people who do actually become members of this particular station, to see if we can move that number into at least double digits."
Burns is 72 and has done more than 40 films. His latest series, The American Revolution, was released on PBS in November.
It tells the story of the 13 American colonies that rebelled against British rule.
"People say, ‘Oh, we're so divided today,’ and we are. But nothing like the revolution, nothing," said Burns.
The “problem we're in right now,” he added, is “where everything is a red state, blue state, right, wrong. We're so preoccupied that we forget that our great strength has been figuring out how to compromise, how to speak to one another, more importantly, how to listen to one another. That's been my mission my entire life,” Burns said.
Burns’ mother died of cancer when he was 11. He recalled how after that, he and his father would stay up late watching old movies. It was then that he first saw his father cry. Burns decided at that time, he wanted to make movies himself, he recalled.
The filmmaker also spoke fondly of the late baseball legend John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil, Jr., who attended Booker Elementary in Sarasota, and featured prominently in Burns' 1994 series Baseball. O'Neil died in 2006. Burns said O'Neil remains one of his favorite people.
“If you met him, you'd just walk on air for the next hour, because you would think that he had woken up that day to see you," said Burns. “My daughter, who I work with always, felt that he was like a grandfather."
