What are your favorie KB docs?
He's done a lot of them, and they can't all be of equal quality.
Which ones do You like ?
Regarding them not all being of equal quality, one thing I can say is that he is an amazingly consistent filmmaker.
As for my favorites, Prohibition was the very first KB film that I watched and I thought it was excellent. Since it was the gateway to Ken Burns for me, it will always hold a special place in my heart. It's a good mid-length film of his, not too short but also not too long.
Frank Lloyd Wright is a good one on the shorter end of the scale. I knew nothing about Wright other than that he was an architect and I learned that he had a very interesting, and in some ways tragic, life. If you have 2 1/2 hours to spare, that's a good way to spend it.
The Roosevelts is also very good and I would recommend it, though you have to be prepared to strap in and exhibit some patience, because it's fourteen hours long. I think it took me about two weeks to finish but I eventually got through it and found it to be a rewarding journey.
His 16-hour doc on country music starts in September. I'm looking forward to it.
From what I know, he earned his teeth with the Civil War, and after that he did one about Major League Baseball and another about Jazz. I guess they would be my go-tos, but he's been busy for a long time, so I wanted to get some feeling for what his best work was.
shareIn terms of style, Ken Burns's films are all very similar. The main difference is that his films set in later time periods are able to take advantage of archive film footage, whereas his films set before the film era rely instead on photos. He doesn't really use reenactments.
Beyond that though, there are really three kinds of films for him in terms of length:
He has done several huge, epic projects that are more than 10 hours long. Some of them, like Baseball and Jazz, approach 20 hours. Then he has a few that are more in the mid-range, like Prohibition, that are around six hours. And then there are his shorter projects, like Thomas Jefferson and Defying the Nazis, that are three hours or less.
I also recommend Prohibition to people as a good starting point since it's manageable in terms of length, it's an interesting subject, and it's one of his more recent films and feels a little less dated than some of his earlier films do. It's also on Netflix right now as well. If you watch that one and don't get into it, then Ken Burns may just not be for you.