Ken Burns delivers keynote

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns delivered the speech “American Lives” for the 2016 keynote lecture of the High Center’s cultural season Nov. 15, 2016. The event sold out weeks in advance. This was Burns’ second lecture at Messiah, having visited previously in 2000.

I’m interested in listening to the voices of the true, honest, complicated past that is unafraid of controversy and tragedy but equally drawn to those stories and moments that suggest an abiding faith in the human spirit,” said Burns to the audience.

Sharing his master storytelling process, he told anecdotes about his films that explore the lives of Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain and Frank Lloyd Wright. He discussed the importance of contradictions in the character of his subjects. For example, Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence but owned hundreds of slaves.

“A hero is not perfect. Indeed, what  makes a hero interesting is the inner negotiation … between that person’s great strengths and their obvious and inevitable weaknesses,” said Burns. “Biography shows us … the complicated lessons of leadership and, by extension, what it means for the rest of us to be good citizens.”

Burns also discussed another important phrase—“and the pursuit of happiness”—that Jefferson included in the historic document.

“I think what Jefferson meant was that merely living, merely surviving is not enough. It is not enough to assure the God-given rights of life and liberty. We must put them to use. We must explore ourselves. Happiness for Jefferson was not a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure in the marketplace of things, but a lifelong involvement of a perfection of oneself in a marketplace of ideas. You understand this here at Messiah very clearly.”

Burns also discussed his upcoming film about the Vietnam War and concluded the lecture with an audience question-and-answer session.

—Anna Seip