The most successful public-television miniseries in American history, the 11-hour Civil War didn't just captivate a nation, reteaching to us our history in narrative terms; it actually also invented a new film language taken from its creator. When people describe documentaries using the "Ken Burns approach," its style is understood: voice-over narrators reading letters and documents dramatically and stating the writer's name at their conclusion, fresh live footage of places juxtaposed with still images (photographs, paintings, maps, prints), anecdotal interviews, and romantic musical scores taken from the era he depicts. The Civil War uses all of these devices to evoke atmosphere and resurrect an event that many knew only from stale history books. While Burns is a historian, a researcher, and a documentarian, he's above all a gifted storyteller, and it's his narrative powers that give this chronicle its beauty, overwhelming emotion, and devastating horror. Using the words of old letters, eloquently read by a variety of celebrities, the stories of historians like Shelby Foote and rare, stained photos, Burns allows us not only to relearn and finally understand our history, but also to feel and experience it.
"The only thing wrong with this 11-hour cinematic mammoth is that it's not longer."
-- Scott Weinberg, APOLLO GUIDE
Thanks to bushman for this amazing release!
Specs of all files:
Video Stream
Compression: xvid - XVID MPEG-4
Resolution: 544x400
Audio Stream
Language: English
Wave Type: 85 - MPEG Layer 3 VBR
Avg. Bitrate: 99,45 kbit/s
Sample Rate: 32000 Hz
Size: about 700MB
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 1 - The Cause
Avg. Bitrate: 869,42 kbit/s
Running Time: 5956,66 s (1h 39m 16s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 2 - A Very Bloody Affair
Avg. Bitrate: 1321,96 kbit/s
Running Time: 4082,50 s (1h 8m 2s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 3 - Forever Free
Avg. Bitrate: 1173,59 kbit/s
Running Time: 4553,05 s (1h 15m 53s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 4 - Simply Murder
Avg. Bitrate: 1466,43 kbit/s
Running Time: 3711,42 s (1h 1m 51s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 5 - The Universe Of Battle
Avg. Bitrate: 909,92 kbit/s
Running Time: 5723,47 s (1h 35m 23s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 6 - Valley Of The Shadow Of Death
Avg. Bitrate: 1295,91 kbit/s
Running Time: 4158,99 s (1h 9m 18s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 7 - Most Hallowed Ground
Avg. Bitrate: 1246,44 kbit/s
Running Time: 4310,44 s (1h 11m 50s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 8 - War Is All Hell
Avg. Bitrate: 1308,39 kbit/s
Running Time: 4122,87 s (1h 8m 42s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - 9 - The Better Angels Of Our Nature
Avg. Bitrate: 1311,16 kbit/s
Running Time: 4115,24 s (1h 8m 35s)
Ken Burns - The Civil War - Bonus DVD Features
Interviews with Ken Burns, Shelby Foote, George Will, Stanley Crouch, Jay Unger and Molly Mason.
Behind the Scenes: The Civil War Reconstruction
Ken Burns: Making History
A Conversation with Ken Burns
Fifty-seven Biography Cards in JPG-Format
capturillas







After earning his BA at Hampshire College, Brooklyn-born Ken Burns pursued a career as a documentary filmmaker. At age 22, he formed Florentine Films in his home base of Walpole, New Hampshire. Dissatisfied with dry, scholarly historical documentaries, Burns wanted his films to "live," and to that end adopted the technique of cutting rapidly from one still picture to another in a fluid, linear fashion. He then pepped up the visuals with "first hand" narration gleaned from contemporary writings and recited by top stage and screen actors. Burns' first successful venture was the award-winning documentary The Brooklyn Bridge, which ran on public television in 1981. While he was Oscar-nominated for his 1985 theatrical release The Statue of Liberty, Burns' work has enjoyed its widest exposure on television: such films as Huey Long (1985), Thomas Hart Benton (1986) and Empire of the Air (1991) (a bouquet to the pioneers of commercial radio) have become staples of local PBS stations' seasonal fund drives. In 1990, Burns completed what many consider his "chef d'oeuvre": the eleven-hour The Civil War, which earned an Emmy (among several other honors) and became the highest-rated miniseries in the history of public television. Civil War was the apotheosis of Burns' master mixture of still photos, freshly shot film footage, period music, evocative "celebrity" narration and authentic sound effects. In 1994, Ken Burns released his long-awaited Baseball, an 18-hour saga which, like The Civil War, was telecast at the same time as the publication of a companion coffee-table book. -- Hal Erickson