Veteran documentarian Ken Burns is on the Board of Governors for the Telluride Film Festival. The creator of classic PBS documentary mini-series like The War, Baseball, and Jazz, all of which have a total runtime of many hundreds of minutes, it’s a wonder this guy watches anything other than the archival material he uses to assemble his films. He mentions a film called Hunger by Steve McQueen that’s playing here. No, it’s not the ghost of the Steve McQueen you might be thinking of, this Steve McQueen is a Turner Prize winning British video artist turned filmmaker. A full review of Hunger with an interview is coming soon.

Ken Burns talks Mad Men and David Fincher after the jump.

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From a McClatchy story from yesterday afternoon, long before Hillary Clinton’s “unexpected” win in the New Hampshire primary:

Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, a New Hampshire resident who’s endorsed Obama, said in an interview the day before the primary…that, if elected, Obama had the potential to be a Lincoln or a Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“He is the embodiment of our wish for ourselves, his ability to transcend the same-old same-old,” Burns said. “He’s a wonderful messenger who carries a complicated message to the rest of us of what we want to be . . . of a whole legacy of promise.”

I’m still trying to work out what it actually means for a messenger to carry me a message of who I want to be, but I do know that Burns has a thing about “transcendent presidents”––that’s the phrase used to describe Lincoln in the official synopsis of The Civil War.

What did Dave do at Telluride? So glad you asked… Here’s what he told me.

5 favorite films:

- The Last King of Scotland (we had a good podcast conversation about the film)
- The War (the first part of the new Ken Burns documentary on WWII)
- The Italian
- Volver
- Infamous (for the acting)

4 interesting people:

- Kevin MacDonald (director of The Last King of Scotland–here’s our podcast featuring him)
- Sharon (an “older” woman who has been coming to the festival for about 10 years with a group of friends–the group has grown and this year numbered about 20)
- Forest Whitaker (lead actor in The Last King of Scotland–we also made a podcast with him)
- a couple from Boston we shared the gondola with after watching The War

3 favorite spots:

- the New Sheridan Saloon (lots of mingling, playing pool, drinking beer)
- the Elks Park (where the outdoor screenings were held)
- the gondola at night (a really stunning way to come down off a film)

2 memorable moments:

- walking and talking with Kevin MacDonald and Forest Whitaker (see podcast links above)
- listening to the conversation between Peter Bogdanovich and Bertrand Tavernier

1 way the festival changed you:

- I realized in a more complete way that there’s such a great diversity of film lovers out there–not a certain type like we sometimes imagine. The thing that ties them all together is their passion for “pictures.”