 His book "To The Distant Observer", while often criticized as a self-serving and selective idealization of Japanese aesthetics in the service of Burch's own anti-structuralist, Marxist ideology, was one of the first attempts by a Western film theorist to situate Japanese cinema within the context of traditional Japanese aesthetics.His first movie, "Noviciat", is an experimental short from 1960 in black and white.In 2010, Burch received Venice Horizons Award on Venice Film Festival for documentary movie "The Forgotten Space".