VIDEO – EDUCATE US –
Jun 27, 2022 – Ken Burns: I’m really proud of the film. I think it will save lives.
It is so critically important because there is an epidemic, not just among young people, but across the board, as a result of the pandemic and just the challenges of a modern life.
Also, my own history was instrumental in doing it. My mother got sick with cancer when I was 2 or 3 years old. There was never a moment when I was aware, a conscious being, when there wasn’t this looming shadow over my family. And three months from my 12th birthday, when I was 11, she passed away.
Almost all of that time was filled with stomach aches and anxiety on my part, inability to go on field trips, all of that stuff. And after she died, I saw my father cry for the first time at a movie. He hadn’t cried when she was sick, hadn’t cried when she died, hadn’t cried at her funeral.
And so I understood that, in some ways, life had dealt him a complicated, and that filmmaking was — for him, provided an emotional safe harbor where he could express himself. And I kind of vowed at that moment at 12 that I would become a filmmaker. That meant a famous Hollywood — like Alfred Hitchcock.
