Ken Burns gives early screening of new film to Simon's Rock community

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By Jenn Smith
Berkshire Eagle Staff

War often is shown through the lens of a camera or a campaign of the military, but its effects on children are seldom seen.

Yesterday afternoon, 11 students from Bard College at Simon’s Rock participated in an intimate discussion with acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

Burns was on campus to give a public preview of never-before-seen clips from “The War,” his new seven-part miniseries on World War II, scheduled to air in September on PBS.

“For me, there wasn’t much of a discussion of war [in school] until [the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks],” said Simon’s Rock senior Olen Helgesen, a political science/history/education major.

He noted that film increasingly has been used as a tool in schools to teach children about the history of war.

Burns said that the only way he was taught in school was through a textbook.

“[Until recently], we’ve atrophied any interest in history…failed to reach out to the American public,” he said. “We trust a textbook to be accurate, but 50 years out we find that it can’t always be so.”

Burns noted that what is more accurate are the experiences shared from war. “The wars don’t change. Our perspective changes.”