Burns shares his vision of past affecting present

Just as his 1990 series on the Civil War held more than 40 million PBS viewers spellbound, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns mesmerized a full house audience last night in Sinclair Auditorium.

He was the guest speaker for Coe College's eighth annual Contemporary Issues Forum, the tickets for which were snapped up faster than tickets to hear the elder George Bush, Lech Walesa, Garry Trudeau and all other Forum speakers before him.

His 75-minute presentation began with footage from his 2007 epic look at World War II, simply titled, “The War.” He broke the solemn hush with a 30-minute, rapid-fire, impassioned discussion of the importance of preserving history, which he said provides the common voice for humanity.

“I am delighted and honored to have this opportunity to speak with you tonight to celebrate the special messages the past - our common heritage, our common memory - continually directs our way,” Burns said. “Let us listen, let us listen.

“Too often as a culture we have ignored this difficult but often joyful historical noise, becoming in the process blissfully ignorant of the power those past lives and stories and moments have over this moment and, indeed, our vast unknown future.

“I am interested in that power of history and I am interested in its many, varied voices, not just the voices of the old top-down version of our past which would try to convince us that American history is only the story of great men, capital G, capital M.”

And even in the telling of many varied facets of American history - from his first film, “Brooklyn Bridge,” to his explorations of Mark Twain, jazz, baseball, national parks and his current project on Prohibition - Burns said he feels like he's “made the same film over and over again.” All are asking, “who are we” and “what does an investigation of the past tell us about who we were and what we have become.”

He likened his work to “a kind of emotional archaeology,” showing him all along the way that “there are no ordinary lives.”