Stephen Ives

Director

Biography

Stephen Ives has directed some of the most-watched films in the history of public television. His work has also appeared on HBO, in major film festivals across the country, and on the front page of the New York Times digital edition. His landmark series The West was seen by more than 38 million people nationwide during its PBS premiere. Caryn James of the New York Times wrote that The West was “fiercely and brilliantly rooted in fact. . . ,” and The New York Daily News called the programs a “br…

Filmography

6.5

American Experience

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

8.4

The West

The West, sometimes marketed as Ken Burns Presents: The West, is a documentary film about the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives and the executive producer was Ken Burns. The film originally aired on PBS in September 1996.

7.0

The Great War

Drawing on unpublished diaries, memoirs and letters, The Great War tells the rich and complex story of World War I through the voices of nurses, journalists, aviators and the American troops who came to be known as “doughboys".

N/A

Sealab

The Sealab project, launched in 1969 off the shore of northern California, was the brainchild of a country doctor turned naval pioneer who dreamed of pushing the limits of ocean exploration like NASA did space exploration. The massive, 300-ton tubular structure was a pressurized underwater habitat, complete with science labs and living quarters for divers who would live and work there on the ocean floor for days or even months at a time. During the height of the Space Race, this daring program also tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized the way humans explore the ocean.

N/A

Panama Canal

On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower.

N/A

Kit Carson

An illiterate mountain man, Kit Carson was fluent in Spanish and five Indian languages; he twice married Native American women, yet led a brutal war against the Navajo. When the West was a mystery to most Americans, Carson mastered it, and his expertise made him not only famous, but also sought after. Eventually, by helping to spur a migration that would change the West forever, he unwittingly became an agent in the destruction of the life he loved.

N/A

Citizen Hearst

Explore the life of William Randolph Hearst, the pioneering media mogul and inspiration for Orson Welles’ "Citizen Kane." Wielding unprecedented power, Hearst forever transformed the media’s role in American life and politics.

N/A

New Orleans

In the wake of hurricane Katrina, as Americans begin a dialogue about the future of one of the nation's most distinctive cities, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents a provocative history of the city that lies at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi. Walled in on almost all sides by water, pressed together by the demands of geography, New Orleans has always been a laboratory where the social forces play out in dramatic and, at times, disastrous fashion.

N/A

Constitution USA with Peter Sagal

CONSTITUTION USA, From New York to San Francisco, from Missoula, Montana to Tyler, Texas, Host Peter Sagal visits people across America introducing viewers to some of today’s major constitutional debates : free speech in the digital age, same-sex marriage, voting rights, separation of church and state, presidential power in the post-9/11 world, to name just a few, and the fascinating stories of the people they affect every day. And for each contemporary story, Sagal dives into the history behind it and talks to prominent legal scholars, historians and public figures, finding out what the Constitution says, the dramatic historical events and crises that defined the Constitution, and why all this matters.

7.0

Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh lived a life of absolutes, never doubting his own abilities or the altitude of his own moral high ground. His extraordinary character brought him unparalleled accomplishment but also public humiliation and lonely isolation, as his faith in genetic determinism could barely conceal his narrow, naive, and racist social and political views.

N/A

Citizen Hearst

6.0

Grand Coulee Dam

During the darkest days of the Depression when construction was started on Grand Coulee Dam, everything about it was described in superlatives. It would be the "Biggest Thing on Earth," the salvation of the common man, a dam and irrigation project that would make the desert bloom, a source of cheap power that would boost an entire region of the country. Of the many public works projects of the New Deal, Grand Coulee Dam loomed largest in America's imagination, promising to fulfill President Franklin Roosevelt's vision for a "planned promised land" where hard-working farm families would finally be free from the drought and dislocation caused by the elements.

7.0

Custer's Last Stand

Follow General George Armstrong Custer from his memorable, wild charge at Gettysburg to his lonely, untimely death on the windswept Plains of the West. On June 26, 1876, Custer, a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage ordered his soldiers to drive back a large army of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. By day's end, Custer and nearly a third of his army were dead.

9.0

The Great War

The American experience during World War I, beginning with Woodrow Wilson's vision for a new democratic world order and the mobilization of an army to fight in France.

7.5

The Big Burn

The dramatic story of an unimaginable wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910.

8.0

Seabiscuit

He was boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn't completely straighten a short straggly tail and an ungainly gait; though he didn't look the part, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. In the 1930s, when Americans longed to escape the grim realities of Depression-era life, four men turned Seabiscuit into a national hero. They were his fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stubborn trainer Tom Smith and the two hard-bitten, gifted jockeys who rode him to glory. By following the paths that brought these four together and in telling the story of Seabiscuit's unlikely career, this film illuminates the precarious economic conditions that defined America in the 1930s and explores the fascinating behind-the-scenes world of thoroughbred racing. Scott Glenn narrates.

6.4

1964

1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support for the civil rights movement or opposition to it, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.

7.0

Reporting America at War

Explores the role of American journalists in the pivotal conflicts of the 20th century and beyond. From San Juan Hill to the beaches of Normandy, from the jungles of Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, reporters who witnessed and wrote the news from the battlefield share dramatic and surprising stories. Examines the challenges of frontline reporting and illuminates the role of the correspondent in shaping the way wars have been remembered and understood.

7.0

Las Vegas: An Unconventional History: Part 1 - Sin City

Traces the often surprising, endlessly entertaining history of the country's most outrageous playground. Interviews with Las Vegas insiders as well as everyday citizens in search of the American Dream chronicle how Las Vegas transformed itself from remote frontier way station into the Depression-era "Gateway to the Hoover Dam," then into the mid-century gangster metropolis known as "Sin City," and finally into a family vacation destination and the fastest-growing city in the United States.

6.9

Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History

America’s favorite board game, Monopoly, is a love letter to unbridled capitalism and the impulses that make our free-market society tick. Contrary to the folksy legend spread by Parker Brothers, Monopoly’s origin involves a radical feminist and a community of Quakers in Atlantic City. If not for the determination of an economics professor and impassioned anti-monopolist, the real story behind the creation of the game might never have come to light.