Filmmaker Ken Burns Brings World War II to Bunker Hill Community College

BOSTON, Nov. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Documentarian and filmmaker Ken Burns,
creator of The War and 19 other films about American history, told an overflow
audience at Bunker Hill Community College today that wars too often happen
when nations forget "to listen to history." Burns spoke as part of the
College's Compelling Conversations speaker series.
Describing his exploration of World War II as "a tour of hell," Burns told
the audience that he had avoided making a documentary about the Second World
War until two statistics changed his mind. The first was that 1,000 veterans
of World War II are now dying every day, taking their personal experience of
the war with them. The second was that a significant number of American high
school seniors in a recent survey thought the United States had fought with
Germany against Russia in World War II.
"I was concerned that we were losing both our veterans and our historic
compass," Burns said. In choosing to tell the story of the most destructive
war in history, in which 60 million people died worldwide, Burns decided to
make a film from the perspective of the people who had fought it. "The story I
wanted to tell, he said, "was not the top-down story of the professional
historian, but the simple, personal, bottom-up story of the so-called ordinary
people-the 18, 19 and 20-years-olds who helped to save the world."
Burns' impassioned lecture drew a standing ovation from the Bunker Hill
audience. At the close of his remarks a Polish woman whose relatives had
perished during the war rose to tell him of her project to collect the stories
of Polish survivors; a German woman spoke of living through the war and its
aftermath in Germany; and an American veteran of World War II stood to thank
Burns for honoring the contributions he and his generation had made to the
war.
Burns, a filmmaker for more than 30 years, has directed and produced a
number of highly acclaimed historical documentaries, including Brooklyn
Bridge, The Civil War, Jazz, Unforgivable Blackness and Baseball. His new
documentary, The War, aired on PBS this fall to rave reviews. Six years in
the making, the epic 14-hour film focuses on the stories of citizens from four
American towns, covering their experiences on the battle-front and the home-
front.
Bunker Hill Community College's Compelling Conversations Speaker Series
will host journalist Mariane Pearl on February 1, 2008, and author Gish Jen on
March 25, 2008. In the past, the series has featured, among others, Academy
Award-winner Richard Dreyfuss, broadcast journalist Juan Williams, civil
rights activist Mary Frances Berry, best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich,
newscaster Ray Suarez and the former president of IrelandMary Robinson.
Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in
Massachusetts. The College enrolls more than 8,800 students on two campuses
and at five satellite locations each semester. Some 1,700 students take
classes online. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher
education in the Commonwealth. Six in ten students are people of color and
more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls more
than 600 international students who come from more than 95 countries and speak
75 different languages.
SOURCE Bunker Hill Community College

Carolyn Assa, Bunker Hill Community College, +1-617-228-2177