{"id":64377,"date":"2025-10-08T01:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/64377\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T01:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:08:10","slug":"for-ken-burns-the-american-revolution-began-with-benjamin-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/64377\/","title":{"rendered":"For Ken Burns, ‘The American Revolution’ began with Benjamin Franklin"},"content":{"rendered":"

After capturing hundreds of hours of footage, over a decade, for his new docuseries The American Revolution, filmmaker Ken Burns<\/a> knew the epic story had to begin with Benjamin Franklin. <\/p>\n

Burns was deeply familiar with the Founding Father from his 2022 PBS documentary, Benjamin Franklin<\/a>, which helped inform aspects of his latest project, especially the introduction. <\/p>\n

Burns and his codirectors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt wanted to follow the foundational ideas behind the American Revolution \u2014 so they started with one of the oldest democracies in the world: the Haudenosaunee Confederacy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The governing body composed of six Indigenous nations, based mostly in what\u2019s now upstate New York, served as major inspiration for Franklin, who pitched it as a model for the emerging American union some 20 years before the Declaration of Independence. <\/p>\n

\u201cBenjamin Franklin [developed a] fascination with the Iroquois Confederacy, the Haudenosaunee, as it was called \u2026 that had been working as a functioning democracy for centuries,\u201d said Burns, who has dedicated his career to chronicling American history. \u201cHe thought, \u2018Oh, maybe we can do that, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Burns, Botstein, and Schmidt begin their six-part, twelve-hour documentary that will premiere on PBS on Nov. 16, just ahead of the Semiquincentennial celebration in 2026. <\/p>\n

It spotlights all the key figures, from Franklin to George Washington to John Adams, along with celebrity voice-overs like Mandy Patinkin reprising his Franklin and Paul Giamatti speaking as Adams (a nod to his legendary turn in HBO\u2019s 2008 miniseries, John Adams). <\/p>\n

\u201cThe folks that we associate with [the American Revolution], they\u2019ve become so two dimensional that our first job is to sort of make them real and dimensional human beings, and then introduce literally dozens, if not scores, of other people who are engaged, particularly women, who are at the heart of the story,\u201d said Burns.<\/p>\n

The film widens the scope beyond the major battles, political events, and societal movements to encompass the perspectives of groups long overlooked in history books, from free and enslaved African Americans, to Native Americans, to women of all ages. That includes the story of James Forten<\/a>, a Black Founding Father who fought in the Revolutionary War. <\/p>\n

\u201cJames Forten was nine years old, a free Black boy in Philadelphia who hears the first time the Declaration is read aloud, and he doesn\u2019t for a second and believe that these \u2018self-evident truths\u2019 didn\u2019t apply to him,\u201d said Burns. <\/p>\n

The director hopes that these stories can more comprehensively and honestly portray the reality of this history, about which scholars are still uncovering new information.<\/p>\n

At a time when President Donald Trump has targeted exhibits about slavery at Independence Hall<\/a> for review and potential removal, Burns\u2019 film reminds the nation to look to historians for answers, not politicians. The Semiquincentennial will bring about many reflections on the American Revolution and Burns encourages everyone to challenge their preconceptions \u2014 because this history is far from settled. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really bloody, and it\u2019s not fun, and it\u2019s very complicated to tell, but [this story is] so much better than the kind of bug-in-amber that we\u2019ve made our Revolution, [as] just a bunch of guys in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Of course, Philadelphia remains at the center of the film as the site where ideas about democracy and independence were first articulated. To portray the city in this historical context, Burns and his team visited Philadelphia dozens of times at various hours of the day, in all sorts of weather, to capture \u201clive cinematography\u201d that gives viewers a sense of that time period, despite being filmed recently. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t film a lot in the city of New York because the historic buildings that exist are so overwhelmed by modernity that it doesn\u2019t really work the same way you can get around and film in Philadelphia,\u201d said Botstein, a longtime collaborator of Burns\u2019 who worked on The U.S. and the Holocaust and The Vietnam War. \u201cFiguring out how to shoot that live cinematography, along with all the reenactments and reenactors, and how we visualized the battles \u2014 that took us years and years and years of experimenting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously no archival footage exists of these historical events, so the filmmakers use the Philadelphia footage to evoke that era, along with close-ups of paintings, drawings, maps, and other historical and archival materials from nearly 350 museums, libraries, and archives around the world. <\/p>\n

Burns typically doesn\u2019t incorporate historical reenactments in his films, but he admitted that, in this case, \u201cwe had to get over that and over ourselves pretty early\u201d to tell this particular part of American history through what he calls intimate and impressionistic portrayals. <\/p>\n

While we all generally know how the story ends, Burns and Botstein relish in the chance to immerse audiences in a narrative that is still surprising about a revolution that was, at the time, considered a major gamble. <\/p>\n

They end the series with a quote from another legendary Philadelphian, Benjamin Rush<\/a>: \u201cThe American war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThat allows the ideas to be active and not passive, to be alive and not dormant, to be ever-changing,\u201d said Burns. \u201cIt\u2019s a process phrase. This is at the heart of us. So, yeah, we just told the story in 12 hours of the American Revolution, but it\u2019s an ongoing idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ken Burns will speak with WHYY\u2019s Terry Gross at an event screening a preview of \u2018The American Revolution\u2019 at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 9, at Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, 1 Harbour Blvd, Camden, N.J., 215-351-1200 or whyy.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After capturing hundreds of hours of footage, over a decade, for his new docuseries The American Revolution, filmmaker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,52312,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-64377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ken-burns-american-revolution-documentary-pbs","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}