Anatomy of a war
Santa Fe preview will give overview of Ken Burns’ Vietnam documentary
Paul Barnes has worked with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on various projects over the course of a few decades.
As an editor, he knows what it takes to complete one of Burns’ masterpieces.
Yet the Santa Fe resident was in for something completely different working with Burns and Lynn Novick on “The Vietnam War.”
Barnes edited two of the episodes in the series.
“It was a very difficult edit because of the complexity of the subject. And the density of the material forced the shows to go through scads of rewriting,” he says. “(On a daily basis) we were finding out new facts and figures. Ken and Lynn wanted to focus on the current information. Because it’s fresh American history, Lynn and Ken were hellbent on making it correct with current research. And we were very cognizant of wanting to update. So that was a much more interesting part of the editing process.”
“The Vietnam War” is a 10-part, 18-hour documentary series by Burns and Novick.
It tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides — Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam.
Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally remastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.
The series premieres Sept. 17.
But New Mexicans will get a special treat on Aug. 30 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe.
Barnes is currently working on a onehour preview to the documentary series. The preview will be screened for free. After the preview, Barnes will sit down with Gene Grant to discuss working on the documentary.
“I’m in the process of choosing the highlights of the 18 hours,” he says. “It should be enough to give the audience a good overview sense of what the series contains.”
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