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Documentary filmmaker (and Ann Arbor favorite son) Ken Burns inspired a capacity crowd of locals and Ann Arbor Film Festival attendees to flock to the Michigan Theater on Thursday, when he spoke as part of the Penny W. Stamps lecture series.

Former New York Times public editor (and former Michigan Daily editor) Daniel Okrent provided questions for the 90-minute event, and began the program by sharing a series of photos taken in Ann Arbor at the time of Burns’ childhood, in the late '60s and early '70s.

Burns spoke of how his mother died not long after his family moved to Ann Arbor in 1963, and how his father often took him to movies at local theaters and on U-M’s campus.

“Watching a movie one day, I saw him cry,” Burns said of his father. “He hadn’t cried … since this whole tragedy had started. For a 12-year-old kid—we were watching ‘Odd Man Out’ at the Architecture Auditorium, and … I understood instantly the power of film. It provided a kind of safe space.”

Consequently, Burns decided he’d be a filmmaker, and kept notes on every film he watched.

But the path to becoming a filmmaker is almost never easy; and after his bookseller best friend gave him—as he suffered from pneumonia—a book that inspired his first major film, the Oscar-nominated “Brooklyn Bridge,” he faced a tough choice.

“I had made no money, and I was living in New York, and realized I was at this critical point where, I could put the film on top of the refrigerator and wake up 30 years later, like that ad guy who’s supposed to write a novel but didn’t because of his paycheck,” said Burns. “And so I moved to a house in New Hampshire, since I knew I could live on practically nothing for a year or two.”

Walpole, New Hampshire is now Burns’ primary base of operations, which Okrent called “Ken Burns-ville.”

“I miss the society of colleagues that you get in New York, … but I also get a lot of work done,” Burns said.

Though Burns has had numerous long-form films air on PBS (“Jazz,” “The National Parks,” “Baseball,” “The War,” etc.), he’s most famous for his 1990 hit, “The Civil War.” Burns explained that the project was born after he’d read Michael Shaara’s novel “Killer Angels” while at his father’s house for Christmas one year.

“I said, ‘I know what I’m doing for my next project,’” said Burns. “And (my father) said, “What?” and I said, ‘The Civil War.’ He said, ‘What part?” ‘All of it.’ And he just shook his head and walked out of the room.”

Okrent asked about how Burns processes criticism, and while the filmmaker acknowledged that useful insights can come from such assessments, “There’s an earnestness that can be misunderstood. ... We live in a society where the person assigned by whatever news organization to review an 18-and-a-half-hour film like ‘Baseball’ is the same person who has, at the same time, to review a half hour situation comedy that’s going to be canceled after three shows. For as much as we claim to be interested in story, because we are saturated in media culture, we actually would rather see the YouTube version of things. … So I think when you’re asking someone to watch 18 and a half hours, … they have to be willing to submit to the narrative.

“ … You could walk into a room full of Cezanne paintings—not to compare my work to that—but you could say, standing in the middle, ‘All of these look alike. It’s the same (expletive) mountain. What it is, is that it takes coming up to the painting, taking in its struggles and interpretations and things like that. If you’re not going to submit to the narrative, … it’s easy to stand outside and take potshots.”

Burns also discussed projects he has in the pipeline (several are described in a recent AnnArbor.com interview), including being in the planning stages of a film on Ernest Hemingway; and in addition to sharing clips from his past work, he showed a never-before-seen clip from a film now being edited, called “The Address,” which highlights learning-disabled young men at a Vermont school who, as an annual challenge, try to memorize and perform the Gettyburg Address. (The planned release for the feature film is this fall, when the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address occurs.)

Burns learned about the school tradition when he was asked to be a judge for the contest, which he said was a beautiful and moving experience. “You can just see them outrunning their deficits,” Burns said.

Following this, Burns took some questions from the audience, including one about the seeming paucity of women in his films and in the film industry.

Another audience member, meanwhile, asked about how Burns plans to continue to reach a generation that now appears to have lost its ability to focus for a sustained length of time.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.