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Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns to Speak at Old Sturbridge Village March 27.

(Sturbridge, Mass.) March 10, 2008 - Award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns will be honored by Old Sturbridge Village at a fund-raising dinner at OSV's Oliver Wight Tavern at 6:00 p.m. Thursday, March 27. Burns, whose most famous documentaries include the PBS series "The Civil War," "Jazz" and "Baseball," and the recently-broadcast series on World War II, "The War," was a former college intern at Old Sturbridge Village, where he shot his very first film about OSV in 1975.

It was in this film about OSV that Burns first developed his famous still photo panning technique now known as "the Ken Burns effect." Old Sturbridge Village will name its visual resource collection in Burns' honor. Cost for the March 27 dinner is $125, seating is limited and reservations are required. For reservations and more information, contact Megan H. Panek, 508-347-0207, mpanek@osv.org.

Ken Burns, who has been making films for more than 30 years, is perhaps the most critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker in the country. According to the late historian Stephen Ambrose, "more Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source."

Burns' films have received dozens of major awards, including seven Emmy Awards and two Oscar nominations. His 1990 series "The Civil War" captured the nation's imagination, and as noted by the Los Angeles Times, "gave people a new way of looking at still photographs, which freeze a moment in time but which he animated by zooming in, or scanning over them, the technique now called the "Ken Burns effect."

Burns first developed that technique in a film about Old Sturbridge Village, produced in 1975 when he was an OSV intern, and earning his B.A. in film at Hampshire College. The 28-minute film, "Working in Rural New England," was his senior project, and he first used the "Ken Burns effect" in the film's last scene, which he later described to the Los Angeles Times, "...in the last scene was a painting which I panned across and showed a transition from an agrarian to an industrial situation."

The Old Sturbridge Village film inspired Burns to pursue historical subjects, a direction he has continued throughout his career.

"Working on that first film aroused in me a passion I didn't know I had, which is history," Burns said of the film at a visit to Old Sturbridge Village in 1996. "That was the first film that I signed my name to. That was the first film in which I felt I was the author."

Burns, whose production company is based in Walpole, N.H., is currently producing and directing a major series on the history of the National Parks, focusing on the ideas and individuals that helped propel into existence what the writer Wallace Stegner once called "America's best idea." This six-part film will air on PBS in 2009. He is also working on a history of Prohibition and an update to his 1994 epic "Baseball."

Old Sturbridge Village, one of the oldest and largest living history museums in the country, celebrates New England life in the 1830s and is open 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Tues.-Sun., and all Mon. holidays. Admission: $20; seniors $18; children 3-17, $6; children under 3, free. For more: www.osv.org or call 1-800-SEE-1830.