At its heart, Ken Burns: Here & There is a love story. From the opening frames to the last dissolve, the film captures Ken’s love of storytelling, his love of small town life, and his love for a bridge in Brooklyn. The documentary also reveals a strong reciprocal love from his neighbors and colleagues – those who admire his passion as an artist and those who share that passion as colleagues and storytellers themselves.

The documentary strings the beads of small stories and monologues into a longer strand that captures the 40-year intimate relationship Ken Burns has with his America, with his colleagues, his family, his community, his craft, taking sweeping historical concepts and making them relatable to his audiences.

In the documentary, Ken Burns the filmmaker is at once empathetic and provocative, gently insightful and relentlessly tenacious. The film draws in the audience as a collaborator, observing his painstaking process of weaving together the tapestry of stories – whether of historical figures, pivotal events, cultural trends, and iconic images of yesterday – to frame who we are as a nation today.

Ken Burns the man looks directly into the camera in the many authentic moments in the film displaying candor and vulnerability, confirming what the public knows about him, and offering surprising, intimate glimpses not previously seen, of him as father, neighbor, philosopher. In one hour, the film reveals the behind-the-camera complexities of the man known as ‘America’s Storyteller.’