Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns received a Presidential Global Citizen Award this week from Jacksonville University.
Before an outdoor luncheon crowd of more than 400 community leaders and dignitaries, Burns said he “very proudly” accepted the award.
“The problems, events, heroisms and leadership that we exhibit are also traits that are common to all of our complicated and striving world,” Burns told the audience in describing the motivations behind his works. “When we embrace that nuance and complexity, we find a great deal of similarity in all of us; no longer are we divided by red state or blue state, male or female, young or old, black or white, but we become human beings.
"And that has been in some ways the major impetus of all my films," he continued. "Each asks the same question, over and over: Who are we, this strange and complicated people we like to call Americans?”
Burns also met with faculty and staff in a discussion of his work and curated the world-premiere of never-before-seen footage from two of his upcoming documentaries: “Jackie Robinson” and “Vietnam.”
In his more than 30-year career, Burns has directed and produced some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “Jazz,” “Lewis and Clark,” “The War,” “The National Parks,” “The Roosevelts”and, most recently, “Cancer: The Emperor of all Maladies.”
President Tim Cost called Burns "the greatest storyteller of our generation."
"He embodies everything about the Presidential Global Citizen Award that we are here to talk about,” Cost said. “When it comes to exceptional educators and an enlightened discourse, I believe Ken Burns stands head and shoulders above all others.”
Burns’ films have been honored with 14 Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, two Oscar nominations, the Peabody Award, the Lincoln Prize and the Steinbeck Award, among many others; and he is the recipient of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Lifetime Achievement Award. “The Civil War” was proclaimed by Real Screen Magazine as the “most influential documentary of all time.”
Burns is the second recipient of the award from JU. The first was given in 2014 to PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra K. Nooyi.