Filmmaker Focuses On Oklahoma Dustbowl Era

Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns is

turning his lens toward the Oklahoma Panhandle for a new four-hour

documentary on the Dust Bowl and its impact on the region.

Burns interviewed dozens of survivors, many of them in the

Panhandle region of Oklahoma, for the documentary that is scheduled

to air this fall on PBS. The film also covers the effect on nearby

parts of Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Burns describes the

Dust Bowl as the "greatest manmade disaster in the nation’s

history."

The two-part series also includes troves of never-before-seen

photographs and homemade films documenting the time in the early

1930s when a combination of drought and high winds pulled up

thousands of tons of over-farmed prairie in the Southern Plains.