LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AND PBS COLLECT AND PRESERVE ORAL HISTORIES OF U.S. WARTIME VETERANS
Veterans
History Project and Filmmaker Ken Burns Launch Educational Outreach
Program to Coincide with Broadcast of "The War"
The Library of Congress Veterans History Project and the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) today announced a joint community engagement
initiative designed to gather first-hand recollections of the diverse
men and women who served our nation during wartime. The public outreach
campaign begins this spring and will continue beyond the broadcast of
Ken Burns" new film, "The War," which is scheduled to air on PBS
beginning on September 23, 2007.
"The staff of the Library of Congress and I are excited to launch this
comprehensive community awareness campaign with PBS and Ken Burns. We
stand at the ready to continue our tradition of honoring America"s war
veterans by preserving their stories for future generations," said
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "The Veterans History
Project collects and archives the one-of-a-kind stories that represent
the diversity of the veterans who served our country"veterans from all
conflicts, all branches of the military, all ranks, all races and
ethnicities."
"The War," a seven-part series directed and produced by Burns and Lynn
Novick, provides a partial snapshot of the World War II experience
through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four
geographically distributed American towns: Waterbury, Conn.; Mobile,
Ala.; Sacramento, Calif.; and the tiny farming town of Luverne, Minn.
The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of one of the
greatest cataclysms in history"a worldwide catastrophe that touched the
lives of people throughout the country"and demonstrates that in
extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.
"PBS is proud to partner with the
Library of Congress on this
extraordinary effort to involve the entire country in a national
discussion about World War II and the contributions of this generation.
"The War" is a magnificent piece of filmmaking that looks at the Second
World War in the most intimate of ways, allowing a handful of
individuals to tell their stories. We hope that the film will build
interest in the broader, important work of the Veterans History Project
and encourage thousands of people from coast to coast to share their
stories with friends, loved ones and, ultimately, the country through
the collection at the Library of Congress," said Paula Kerger,
president and chief executive officer of PBS.
"There have been countless books and films about the Second World War,"
Ken Burns said. "In "The War," we try to allow a small group of
individuals to tell their bottom-up story. This film is as much about
storytelling, about sharing unique experiences, as it is about World
War II, and as such we hope that it touches on the universal human
experience of battle. Of course, the film only provides a small window
into the much larger experience of the hundreds of thousands who have
served during times of war. We hope that by providing the tools to
people around the country, especially young people, we can work
together to capture many more of these stories before the generation
that fought in World War II has passed."
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is also funding an enormous
community engagement campaign for "The War," involving more than 100
public television stations nationwide that will reach out to a broad
range of veterans and their families to capture the stories that make
up the rich mosaic of America. Public television stations will target
thousands of individual stories to be shared locally on-air, online and
through community events and activities. For more information, visit
www.pbs.org/thewar.
WETA, Washington, D.C., and the Veterans History Project have developed
a field guide with a "how-to" on conducting oral history interviews,
which includes pointers from Burns on lighting and shooting the video.
Additional information provides instructions on how to send recorded
interviews to the Veterans History Project.
The Veterans History Project, a major program of the Library of
Congress American Folklife Center, is an oral history program created
by Congress in 2000. Legislation for the Project was introduced by Rep.
Ron Kind (D-WI) in the U.S. House of Representatives and sponsored by
Rep. Amo Houghton (R-NY) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). In the U.S.
Senate, principal sponsors were Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) and Sen. Chuck
Hagel (R-NE). The Project unites diverse communities around a common
purpose: collect and preserve the personal recollections of U.S.
wartime veterans, as well as homefront civilians who worked in support
of the armed forces, to honor their service and share their stories
with current and future generations. These one-of-a-kind interviews are
housed in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress. To
date, the Veterans History Project has collected more than 45,000
individual stories. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/vets.
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a private, nonprofit media
enterprise that serves the nation"s 355 public noncommercial television
stations, reaching nearly 90 million people each week through on-air
and online content. WETA is the third-largest producing station in the
public television system and the flagship public broadcaster in the
nation"s capital. For more information on WETA and its programs, visit
www.weta.org. For more information on PBS, visit www.pbs.org.
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PR 07-70
4/17/07
ISSN 0731-3527