More than 500 years after his death, the works of Leonardo da Vinci have never been more ubiquitous. “Mona Lisa” just got her own Lego set, and recently played a central role in Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” A controversial allusion to his famed “The Last Supper” during this summer’s Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony reacquainted the masses with the iconic image’s origins, and his “Vitruvian Man” is still a staple on the walls of anatomy classrooms across...
Florentine Films
Ken
Burns
Director / Producer
Since 1981, Burns has earned widespread acclaim for his deep-dive, straightforwardly named documentaries exploring American culture, from “The Brooklyn Bridge” and “The Statue of Liberty” (both Oscar nominated) to “The Civil War,” “Jazz” and this fall’s “Country Music.” Upcoming, backed by longtime corporate underwriter Bank of America, Burns has biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Benjamin Franklin, Muhammad Ali and Lyndon B. Johnson and films on the American Revolution and the Holocaust. He’s executive producing “Ken Burns Presents” films directed by colleagues, including Lynn Novick’s “College Behind Bars,” Sarah Burns and David MacMahon’s “East Lake Meadows” (about the history of public housing) and Barak Goodman’s “The Gene” (on the human genome). In March, the Library of Congress/Lavine Ken Burns Prize, an annual $200,000 grant for historical documentaries, was established.
