Ken Burns Gives Nantucket Film Festival Audiences a Glimpse of His Latest Doc ‘Leonardo da Vinci’
variety.comAddie Morfoot Contributor Ken Burns attended the 29th annual Nantucket Film Festival, which concludes Sunday, to give audiences a glimpse of his latest PBS documentary “Leonardo da Vinci.” The two-part, four-hour doc — directed by Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns and his son-in-law David McMahon — explores the life and work of the 15th-century polymath. “Leonardo da Vinci,” which begins airing in November, marks the first project Burns has directed that unfolds entirely outside the continental United States.
Although his work on “Leonardo da Vinci” is done, Burns has projects lined up through 2029. Currently, the director is working on several documentaries, including ones on Lyndon B.
Johnson, the American Revolution and Barack Obama. Variety spoke with Burns about making a doc not based in American history, his views on directing films about contemporary topics and why history never repeats itself. Why did you decide to make Leonardo da Vinci the subject of your first doc that doesn’t explore the American experience? I was working several years ago on a film about Benjamin Franklin, and among the people that we interviewed for that film was [author] Walter Isaacson.
I was having dinner with Walter and all of the sudden, in the middle of dinner, he started pushing Leonardo, and I just went, “Come on.” He thought that Benjamin Franklin is arguably the great American artist in words of the 18th century and the greatest scientist of the age, and Leonardo was the greatest scientist of his age and arguably the greatest artist of the world at that time.
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