Ken Burns's 'The National Parks: America's Best Idea' to Drive National Conversation on Diversity and America's Parks

/PRNewswire / -- At a one-day conference called "Parks for All" in San Francisco today, filmmaker Ken Burns said that he hopes his most recent film, THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA, will help attract new communities into the country's parks.

Burns and co-producer Dayton Duncan outlined an extensive outreach campaign that will accompany the broadcast of THE NATIONAL PARKS this September on PBS, including visits to 45 markets where the filmmakers will show clips and lead discussions about the national parks. The documentary tells the history of the national park idea, chronicling its birth in the mid-1800s and tracing its evolution for nearly 150 years.

The Untold Stories Project, conceived in 2004, will supplement the already ambitious educational and community outreach plans normally associated with a Burns film. "We hope it will prompt more people to experience their parks -- and become stewards of their future," he said.

Among the elements of the NATIONAL PARKS outreach campaign are:

-- Special research about the people and stories often overlooked in
histories of the national parks. Many of the stories were incorporated
into the larger series and into the companion book. The entire
research document has been organized into a book that will be donated
to the National Park Service for its use.
-- A special 45-minute film, The National Parks: This Is America, which
tells the story of the national park idea through the lens of a
diverse cast of historical characters and brings the story closer to
the present than does the larger documentary. This, too, will be given
to the National Park Service.
-- Five mini-documentaries of about 10 minutes each, profiling people
from diverse backgrounds involved in contemporary parks issues. The
topics include "City Kids in National Parks," "Manzanar - 'Never
Again,'" "Mount Rushmore - Telling America's Stories," "San Antonio
Missions - Keeping History Alive" and "Yosemite's Buffalo Soldiers."

-- Translation of the 12-hour series into Spanish for broadcast on PBS
stations that choose to do so and translation of the shorter films
into Spanish, Japanese and Lakota.

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