Who Are We?: A Festival Celebrating the Films of Ken Burns

Ken Burns has been making documentary films about America’s history and its people for over forty 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 about war, racism, and presidential leadership.

Ken Burns comes to Gettysburg for the first-ever festival dedicated solely to his work on February 10-12, 2023. More than a career retrospective, festival goers are able to engage with Burns, his collaborators, historians, and students in consequential conversations about the simple question Burns has explored in all his films: Who Are We?

All festival events require reservations, even though most of the remaining tickets are free, including breakout sessions with historians and filmmakers and screenings of various documentary episodes from Burns’ 40-year catalog.

Special guests currently scheduled to attend include longtime Burns collaborators Geoffrey Ward, writer; Sarah Botstein, producer; and Allen Moore, cinematographer, as well as musicians Jay Ungar, Molly Mason, and Jacqueline Schwab, and exonerated Central Park Five member Kevin Richardson. Tracie Potts and Susan Eisenhower of Gettysburg College’s Eisenhower Institute take part in a post-film discussion about Episode 4 of The War, “Pride of Our Nation.” The episode covers D-Day and General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s leadership of American armed forces and will be shown at 1 p.m.

The roster of events, screening and sessions is available here

Limited tickets are available online; most tickets must be reserved by calling the Box Office at (717) 337-8200 or visiting the Majestic Theater in person