Ken Burns Attended the 29th annual edition. Nantucket Film Festival, which concludes Sunday, to give audiences a glimpse of his latest PBS documentary, “Leonardo da Vinci.” The two-part, four-hour documentary, directed by Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns and his son-in-law David McMahon, explores the life and work of the 15th-century scholar. “Leonardo da Vinci,” which begins streaming in November, marks the first Burns-directed project to take place entirely outside of the continental United States.
Although his work on “Leonardo da Vinci” is already finished, Burns has projects lined up through 2029. The director is currently working on several documentaries, including some about Lyndon B. Johnson, the American Revolution and Barack Obama.
Variety He spoke with Burns about making a documentary that isn’t based on American history, his views on directing films about contemporary issues, and why history never repeats itself.
Why did you decide to make Leonardo da Vinci the subject of your first documentary that doesn’t explore the American experience?
I was working several years ago on a film about Benjamin Franklin, and among the people we interviewed for that film was Addie Morfoot Walter Isaacson. She was having dinner with Walter and suddenly, in the middle of dinner, she started pushing Leonardo and I said, “Come on.” He thought that Benjamin Franklin is possibly the greatest American artist in the words of the 18th century and the greatest scientist of the time, and Leonardo was the greatest scientist of his time and possibly the greatest artist in the world at that time. He kept pushing him and pushing him, and finally I said, “Come on, Walter. Leave him alone”. So I left the restaurant and called my oldest daughter. [Sarah Burns] and son-in-law [David McMahon]. At the time, we were working on a big four-part biography of Muhammad Ali, and I said, “Walter is just pushing Leonardo on me,” and they said, “We’ll do Leonardo.” So the next morning I called Walter and said, “We’ll do it.”
Do you think your Da Vinci film speaks to what is happening today?
Human nature does not change. People think that history repeats itself. It never does. No event has occurred twice. Mark Twain is supposed to have said, “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Every time we’ve worked on a movie, we’ve focused on the movie and the story we’re trying to tell. It has a million problems that we have to overcome and solve. When we’re done, we look up and say, “Wow. “It’s very contemporary.” If I told you that I was making a film about mass demonstrations taking place against the current administration across the country; about a White House in disarray and obsessed with leaks; about the asymmetric war that confused the powerful US military; about huge document deliveries of stolen classified material and accusations that a political party reached out to a foreign power to affect a national election; It would seem that we are talking about now. Triumph. But all this is true in 2006, when I decided to do “The Vietnam War.” So there’s never been a movie where when you talk about human nature, you don’t talk about the present. That tells you how powerful a history teacher and stories about the past can be, because they’re always going to talk in a relatively dispassionate way about everything that’s happening now.
What do you think da Vinci’s main conclusion will be?
So Leonardo is this gay man born out of wedlock who is the greatest painter of all time in some people’s minds. He is undoubtedly the greatest scientist of his time. He didn’t see any difference between [art and science]. And when you say, “How many paintings does it have?” People say, “I don’t know. Hundreds? There are less than 20 and half of them were unfinished. It also has thousands and thousands of pages of notebooks that anticipate things that will not be discovered for another 450 years. Their description of the heart and how the heart valve works was not discovered [what da Vinci knew about the heart valve] until the 1970s. It’s just incredibly impressive. So, like the United States, which I’ve focused so much on, even though it has its flaws, it creates aspirations. This guy was using 75% of his brain and we’re using 10%. What would it take to use more? That one question, if it brightens even a second of your day for one day, is better than not saying, “How could it be better?” How could I be smarter? What could I see more clearly?
Do you plan to make more documentaries outside the United States?
I can’t say never anymore, but I’m full of projects that will be underway until the end of this decade. All of them are American subjects. Leonardo’s film will be released in November, and the following November will be my film about the American Revolution, which is an incredibly challenging project. There are no photographs or newsreels. It’s a bloody and really complicated topic.
You’re working on a documentary about Barack Obama. Is this his first film to cover contemporary America?
Well, no. With Obama’s document, all that remains is to macerate. It’s like wine. The story is like this. You understand that it is better when you step back and have perspective and it is no longer just journalistic. The closest one [contemporary doc] What we ever did was “The Central Park Five.” But even that came to light 23 years after the crime and 10 years after they were exonerated.