The filmmakers, Sarah Burns & David McMahon, will introduce the preview and conduct a post-screening Q&A.
The Sunday, July 21, 4 pm event is a fundraiser for The Park Theatre. Tickets are $20, and children 12 and under are free.
VIP TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT.
SARAH BURNS AND DAVID McMAHON WRITE AND CO-DIRECT TWO-PART, FOUR-HOUR FILM, BURNS’S FIRST NON-AMERICAN SUBJECT
Original Music Composed by Caroline Shaw and Performed by Attacca Quartet, So Percussion and Roomful of Teeth
LEONARDO da VINCI, a new, two-part, four-hour documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon.
The film, which explores the life and work of the 15th century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human.
The musician and composer Caroline Shaw recorded original music for the film performed by Attacca Quartet, So Percussion and Roomful of Teeth. The voice of Leonardo is read by the Italian actor Adriano Giannini. Keith David serves as the film’s narrator.
Set against the rich and dynamic backdrop of Renaissance Italy, at a time of skepticism and freethinking, regional war and religious upheaval, LEONARDO da VINCI brings the artist’s towering achievements to life through his prolific personal notebooks, primary and secondary accounts of his life, and on-camera interviews with modern scholars, artists, engineers, inventors, and admirers.
“No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”
The film weaves together an international group of experts, as well as others influenced by Leonardo who continue to find a connection between his artistic and scientific explorations and life today. As the filmmaker and Leonardo admirer Guillermo del Toro says at the beginning of the film, “the modernity of Leonardo is that he understands that knowledge and imagination are intimately related.”
“As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns (MUHAMMAD ALI, EAST LAKE MEADOWS, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE). “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”
“Though we follow Leonardo’s personal journey and explore his artistic and scientific accomplishments, we’re also really focused on what went on in his mind and on understanding the depths of his curiosity. To do this we use material from his notebooks mixed with archival film, photos and sound, along with our cinematography and visual effects, and we’re not afraid to stray from the timeline,” said David McMahon (MUHAMMAD ALI, EAST LAKE MEADOWS, THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE). “Leonardo’s thinking was so unique, and in many ways timeless, that our traditional approach alone would have been insufficient.”
Born out of wedlock to a notary and a peasant woman, Leonardo distinguished himself as an apprentice to a leading Florentine painter and later served as a military architect, cartographer, sculptor, and muralist for hire. His paintings and drawings, such as the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man, are among the most celebrated works of all time and his art was often equaled by his pursuits in science and engineering. - PBS.org
Directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, written by David McMahon and Sarah Burns, and executive produced by Ken Burns, Leonardo da Vinci is slated for broadcast November 18-19, 2024 on PBS (4 hours).