Academy Award winning filmmaker Ken Burns demonstrated how jazz music, baseball, and the Civil War each have played a critical role in shaping American history when he spoke on Thursday evening at the Elliott Hall of Music at Purdue University.

Burns’ talk centered on celebrating America’s true and complicated past and how he goes about constructing his documentaries. For this talk, Burns focused on his famous trilogy of documentaries, The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994/2010), and Jazz (2001).

Ken Burns is a multiple Emmy and Academy Award winner and is known for creating “heroic television” (The Washington Post). He is known as a storyteller and documentary film legend. Burns spoke as a part of the Purdue Series on Corporate Citizenship and Ethics. This series is put on through collaboration between the Krannert School of Management and the Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship in the College of Education.

The talk focused on The American Experience, and the impact that jazz music, baseball, and the Civil War have had on building America.

Burns repeatedly brought up how our country is a country of heroes, villians, racial strife, unfairness, and struggle. This plays out in each and every story he constructs. What Burns seeks to do in his documentaries is to tell the full story—not just the top down view or the overly critical stories.

Burns emphasized that the Civil War was a critical point in our nation’s history. He pointed out that our country was completely different before it and we would be on a completely different trajectory without it.

“The Civil War was almost our nation’s suicide,” Burns said.

Caroline O’Connell is on the board of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association and has watched every Ken Burns documentary. She said that her biggest take-away was how timely the talk was to today’s issues.

“Everything has happened in America has happened on the inside, with racism, and social issues and it reminded me of everything that is happening in politics now,” O’Connell said.

Jan Davis, Purdue nursing professor attended the talk because she has been a Ken Burns fan for 22 years. Her favorite film is Civil War, and she agreed that Burns’ talk was a good reminder of the current state of the republic.

“If the republic fractures, it will be internal,” she said, as she reflected on the topic of the evening.

But Burns reminded his audience that America has a certain genius in its storyline.

“The genius of America is improvisation,” Burns said that everything from the Constitution, to baseball, and jazz music have each been complete improvisation.

Burns spoke about how he goes about constructing each of his films and the convictions that repeat themselves in his creations.

“I have to admit, I have really just made the same film again and again,” Burns said. “Who are we?” Burns said that’s the question he repeatedly seeks to answer in his films and how Burns shares

The American Experience.