Following up on our earlier post about Latino state legislators from the Bronx and the rest of NYC demanding that PBS include the contributions of Latino Americans in a 14-hour Ken Burns documentary about World War II, the network has ruled out changing the film, citing its concerns about editorial independence and "federal interference in content," according to an article today in The New York Times.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has also been active in pressuring PBS to include the Latino perspective. Burns originally offered to include Latino stories in a supplemental segment by a Latino filmmaker to be aired following his film, but that didn't assuage the critics.
Burns ruled out any changes to his film. “It would be destructive, like trying to graft an arm onto your child,” he told the Times.“It would destroy the film.”
Saturday, May 5, 2007
PBS Rebuffs Latino Pols on World War II Documentary
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I think the desire to include Latinos in a Ken Burns documentary is a little bit too late, and really just not fair for the production, itself. It's also unfair to the Latino community.
ReplyDeleteThe protest should have come about BEFORE he made his baseball documentary. This is definitely a sport that had Latinos actually influencing the game, and Burns didn't include them in his baseball documentary.
Ken Burns is very approachable: I solicited one of my jazz artists to him when he was making his jazz documentary about 8 years ago. None of us realized the documentary would stop in the '60s. And there is contemporary jazz coverage all over the media.
If you can't get him, find other media outlets to cover your cause. Don't put all the burden on Ken Burns to tell your story.
World War II had a great deal of contributions from our minorities, and troops were generally segregated. Since we have Latino lawmakers involved with the protest of Burns' documentary, I propose they combine with minority businesses (as sponsors) and all other interested parties to fund production of a full-fledged WW II documentary on the involvement of minorities.
By the way, I think it's just piecemeal to include a small segment of Latinos in the airing this fall for Ken Burns' production. Again, let's have the community support the minority filmmakers to reveal history. PBS would support this.