A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2007 Sony BMG Music Entertainment/Sony Legacy Records and Florentine Films On September 26, 2007, 300 or so Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member stations in the United States aired A Necessary War, the first episode of Ken Burns’ seven-part   documentary series about the American experience in World War II. A bottom-up story told mainly by the residents – civilians and military veterans – of four quintessentially American towns (Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Luverne, MN, and Sacramento, CA), The War: A Ken Burns Film – unlike British ITV’s The World at War – focuses primarily on personal experiences, with more intimate reminisces about the human experience of war instead of discussions about tactics, grand strategy, and Big Power politics. The War was originally scheduled to air on September 15, 2007, but protests by Latino and Native American advocates about Burns’ emphasis on stories told by white and African American interviewees at the expense of their narrative cause