{"id":5283,"date":"2026-08-14T15:36:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=5283"},"modified":"2026-08-14T15:36:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:36:57","slug":"ken-burns-says-election-rigging-fears-unearthed-in-american-revolution-doc-sounded-so-trump-esque-he-had-to-cut-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=5283","title":{"rendered":"Ken Burns Says Election Rigging Fears Unearthed in \u2018American Revolution\u2019 Doc Sounded So Trump-Esque He Had to Cut Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tProlific U.S. documentarian Ken Burns graced the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Friday, with attendees hanging onto his every word at the city\u2019s Central Hall.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=5281\">How \u2018Walter Boys\u2019 Star Noah LaLonde Went From Hockey Player to Heartthrob<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tBurns, an Oscar nominee best known for acclaimed works <em>Brooklyn Bridge <\/em>(1981), <em>The Civil War <\/em>(1990), <em>Jazz <\/em>(2001) and <em>The Vietnam War <\/em>(2017), spoke eloquently about putting on screen history, politics and war, prompting a standing ovation at the end of the session. He covered his vast array of projects and culturally rich career over the course of an hour, including his most recent six-part series <em>The American Revolution<\/em>, with host Dave Calhoun.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAmong the highlights was Burns talking about why his Barack Obama documentary remains unreleased despite filming eight two-hour interviews with the former U.S. president, and the one sacrifice he feels he\u2019s made by sticking with long-time distribution partner PBS over premium cable or streaming service.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe conversation was interspersed with clips from Burns\u2019 best work, such as <em>The American Revolution<\/em>, and the filmmaker touched on the story of a German officer\u2019s wife who \u201cheard Americans eat cats\u201d as she made her passage across the Atlantic to war-torn 18th-century America. \u201cIn our last election cycle, that was a big thing,\u201d said Burns, referencing President Trump\u2019s unfounded claim during a 2024 presidential debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating their pets.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis prompted Burns to talk about the cyclical nature of world events and how some parallels to current-day politics spooked him into cutting certain parts from the American Revolution doc. \u201cThomas Jefferson wrote a constitutional convention [\u2026] and said, \u2018What if someone should lose an election but pretend false votes?\u2019 And I had that in, and then we had a line that said Alexander Hamilton was concerned too. [He said], \u2018What if someone should melt hobby horses with popularity and create chaos? No man is above the law.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cAfter Trump was re-elected, I said, \u2018It\u2019s gonna be so obvious.\u2019 People are gonna say I put that in [on purpose]. So we pulled it out,\u201d said Burns, again alluding to the current U.S. leader who has consistently accused Joe Biden of election fraud in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=5279\">\u2018Black Mirror\u2019 Director Says She Rejected HBO\u2019s \u2018Harry Potter\u2019: \u201cAbsolutely F***ing Not\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe also discussed staying loyal to PBS, explaining that the Vietnam project took 10-and-a-half years to make because the fundraising process was \u201cso frustrating.\u201d He continued: \u201cAnd I could have walked into a premium cable or streaming service and in one pitch gotten that $30 million. What they wouldn\u2019t have given me is control. They would have wanted it in a year and a half or two years. I could not have done <em>The Vietnam War<\/em> in that time, and I would have had layers of suits, as we call them, giving me notes too long, too short, too violent, not violent enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt made Burns realize \u201chow fortunate\u201d he was, and that he was losing \u201cnothing in quality of life\u201d by living in rural New Hampshire. \u201cI gain from it a healthy relationship with nature,\u201d he continued about living a little off-grid in a town called Walpole. \u201cThe only thing I sacrificed was this: the society of my colleagues, and I am sad that that\u2019s a casualty of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCalhoun asked Burns for an update on his Barack Obama documentary, to which Burns said he\u2019s \u201cwaiting for the dust to settle\u201d on Obama\u2019s U.S. presidency. He has, however, filmed eight interviews with the ex-world leader. \u201cThe last one was in 2024. We decided to wait to do it, til the dust settles. Dust hasn\u2019t settled, and so hopefully it does settle, and we\u2019ll be able to do it. And then I will probably wait many years because we want to escape the specific gravity of [his presidency], get out of that dialect and get into the range [of] new scholarship\u2026 Unfortunately, the current occupants are so constipated the scholarship hasn\u2019t been as much as you would expect on Obama yet, even though we\u2019re 10 years out of his presidency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIndustry speakers at this year\u2019s Edinburgh Film Festival, running Aug. 14-21, include Christine Vachon, Ewan McGregor and Kenneth Branagh.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=5277\">Critics Pick Summer TV\u2019s Beauties and Bores<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns spoke at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Friday about Donald Trump, &#039;The American Revolution&#039; and his Barack Obama doc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2199,2200,2,3404],"class_list":["post-5283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-edinburgh-2026","tag-edinburgh-international-film-festival","tag-international","tag-ken-burns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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