Close Modal LEONARDO da VINCI: An Afternoon with Ken Burns and Sarah Burns Don’t miss a special preview event celebrating the release of LEONARDO da VINCI, a new, two-part, four-hour documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. Join filmmakers Ken Burns and Sarah Burns in the Mugar Omni Theater for an afternoon of conversation featuring preview excerpts from the new series LEONARDO da VINCI, premiering in November on PBS.The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human. Get Tickets Date and Time Tuesday, October 15 | 1:00 – 2:00 pm Location Mugar Omni Theater View Map Price $10 Language English Get Tickets Date and Time Tuesday, October 15 | 1:00 – 2:00 pm Location Mugar Omni Theater View Map Price $10 Language English Join filmmakers Ken Burns and Sarah Burns in the Mugar Omni Theater for an afternoon of conversation featuring preview excerpts from the new series LEONARDO da VINCI, premiering in November on PBS.The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human. Featured Speakers Image Ken Burns Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; The U.S. and the Holocaust; and, most recently, The American Buffalo.Future film projects include Leonardo da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others.Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. In September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In November of 2022, Ken was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Image Sarah Burns Sarah Burns is the author of The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding (Knopf, 2011) and, along with David McMahon and Ken Burns, the producer, writer, and director of the documentary The Central Park Five, about the five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly convicted in the infamous Central Park Jogger rape of 1989. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, was named the Best Non-Fiction film of 2012 by the New York Film Critics Circle and won a 2013 Peabody Award.She produced and directed, along with David McMahon and Ken Burns, the two-part, four-hour Jackie Robinson, a biography of the celebrated baseball player and civil rights icon, which she wrote with McMahon. The film aired on PBS in April 2016 and she and McMahon were nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Nonfiction Program and won a WGA award for Documentary Script.In 2020, Burns and McMahon produced and directed a documentary about a housing project in Atlanta called East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story. Together with McMahon and Ken Burns, Sarah produced and directed a four-part biography of Muhammad Ali, which premiered on PBS in September 2021 and was named the best television show of 2021 by Awards Daily writer David Phillips. She and McMahon were nominated for a WGA award for Documentary Script. Her next project is a two-part documentary biography of Leonardo da Vinci, which will air on PBS in November 2024.Sarah was born and raised in Walpole, New Hampshire. She graduated from Yale University with a degree in American Studies, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, David McMahon, and their children.
