Legendary neurologist and author Oliver Sacks (Awakenings; The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat) shares the intimate details of his battles with drug addiction, homophobia, and a medical establishment resistant to his work in this illuminating documentary by Ric Burns. Sacks was a fearless explorer of unknown mental worlds who helped redefine our understanding of the brain and mind, the diversity of human experience, and our shared humanity. A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis, Sacks sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by family, friends, and notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it. Drawing on these deeply personal reflections, as well as nearly two dozen interviews with close friends, family members, colleagues and patients, and archival material from every point in his life, this film is the story of a beloved doctor and writer who redefined our understanding of the brain and mind.
Invited Guests: Director Ric Burns; Subjects Kate Edgar, Billy Hayes
Geoblocked to California
RIC BURNS is a documentary filmmaker and writer, best known for his eight-part, 17-hour series NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM,which premiered nationally on PBS to critical acclaim (1999, 2001, 2003). Burns has been writing, directing and producing historical documentaries for over 25 years, since his collaboration on the PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his brother Ken and co-wrote with Geoffrey Ward. Since founding Steeplechase in 1989, he has directed many films of note for PBS including CONEY ISLAND (1991), THE DONNER PARTY (1992), THE WAY WEST (1995), ANSEL ADAMS (2002), and many more. His work has won numerous film and television awards including six Emmy awards, three Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Journalism awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Organization of American Historians’ Erick Barnouw prizes, three Writers Guild of America Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Writing, and the D.W. Griffith Award of the National Board of Review. Burns was educated at Columbia University and Cambridge University. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.