The West (documentary)
| The West | |
|---|---|
DVD cover for The West
|
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| Also known as | 'Ken Burns Presents: The West' |
| Genre | Documentary film |
| Written by |
Dayton Duncan Geoffrey Ward |
| Directed by | Stephen Ives |
| Voices of |
Adam Arkin Matthew Broderick Keith Carradine John Lithgow Gary Sinise Jimmy Smits |
| Narrated by | Peter Coyote |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 8 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Ken Burns |
| Producer(s) | Stephen Ives Jody Abramson Michael Kantor |
| Running time | 12 hours (8 episodes) |
| Production company(s) |
Insignia Films Florentine Films WETA-TV |
| Release | |
| Original network | PBS |
| Original release | September 15 – September 22, 1996 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The West, sometimes marketed as Ken Burns Presents: The West, is a 1996 documentary film about the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives and featured Ken Burns as executive producer. The film was divided into eight episodes and originally aired on PBS in September 1996.
Stephen Ives and Ken Burns had worked together on several previous films, including The Civil War (1990) and Baseball (1994). In 1988, Ives created his own production company, Insignia Films, and began working on The West as director, with Burns signed on to the project as executive producer. In order to create The West, the film crew traveled over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) via airplane, conducted 72 interviews, visited 74 archives and collections, and filmed more than 250 hours of footage. The film's production was funded by General Motors.
Notable interviewees included historians Stephen Ambrose, J. S. Holliday, and Richard White; novelists Maxine Hong Kingston and N. Scott Momaday; environmentalists and writers Terry Tempest Williams and Marc Reisner; and politicians Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Ann Richards, Stewart Udall, and Ralph Yarborough.
Many notable actors lent their voices to The West, including Adam Arkin, Ossie Davis, Keith Carradine, John Lithgow, Mary Stuart Masterson, Blythe Danner, the famous playwright Arthur Miller, and Jimmy Smits. The film's narrator, Peter Coyote, later also narrated Burns' documentary film The National Parks (2009).
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