Inside the Doc World Controversy Pitting Ken Burns Against His Peers
variety.comKen Burns was hard at work on a four-part docuseries about Muhammad Ali, to debut in 2021, the news was greeted with much anticipation: one of the film world’s greats on the Greatest.
The only hint of criticism came from some who thought Ali’s life was already well-trod territory. But four years later — in the wake of a racial reckoning in America that had the film industry, like so many others, reevaluating its commitment to diversity — the docu community had become considerably less welcoming of the project.
With public chatter about a lack of representation and opportunity for people of color reaching a peak, a coalition of 140 documentary filmmakers sent an open letter to PBS in March 2021, slamming the choice of Burns to helm what was being positioned as the definitive doc on Ali. “Your commitment to diversity at PBS is not borne out by the evidence,” the letter read, in part. “When you program a series on Muhammad Ali by Ken Burns, what opportunity is there for a series or even a one-off film to be told by a Black storyteller who may have a decidedly different view?” It was one of the most high-profile shots in a war that’s been raging for several years now in creative fields from journalism and literature to documentary and narrative filmmaking: Who should be allowed to tell certain stories, and who shouldn’t?
Burns, for one, acknowledges that many communities have been underrepresented in major creative roles in the film world. In response to the letter back in 2021, he noted that PBS has instituted many initiatives to support filmmakers of color and had been supporting “a multiplicity of perspectives” for decades.
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