Axios interview: Ken Burns previews American Revolution documentary

Axios

18 hours ago

Ken Burns told Axios that his forthcoming six-part series — " The American Revolution" — has been in the works since December 2015 and required "years and years and years" of filming war reenactors across the 13 original colonies.
The 12-hour film — directed by Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt — will premiere Nov. 16 on PBS and run for six consecutive nights at 8 p.m. ET.
Why it matters:"It's about really big ideas, the biggest ideas in humankind, and it's also an incredibly violent struggle," the legendary filmmaker tells us.
"I think that we've papered over the violence, maybe because we don't have any photographs or newsreels."
"Somehow, we've sort of neglected to understand how incredibly bloody. It was a civil war ... it's just a big battle of Americans killing other Americans, and this is what has to be understood."
His other documentary epics — including "The Civil War," "Baseball" and "The Vietnam War" — have heavily featured archival photographs and footage.
This time, Burns "realized you had to get over an aversion" to reenactments, which he has used sparingly in other projects.
The film crew shot reenactors in nearly 100 locations "in every time of day and every season, mostly at dawn or dusk ... in French uniforms and Native American uniforms, in Hessian uniforms, in British uniforms, in American militia and Continental Army uniforms."
"And then we used paintings. I go and I say, 'Do we have Continentals firing at the British?' And we have a musket volley, very close up, very impressionistic, and we then have a returning British volley, and then that melds with the painting."
Burns also said the film has more maps than in all of the other films he's made combined — "and I've been doing this for a little while."
Zoom out:"We now know from the safety of our armchair that you know how it turned out, but you know at Lexington Green 250 years ago, the chances of patriot success are absolutely zero," Burns says.
"We've made a film not only about how we got to Lexington Green. That's called episode one, but how in two through six, we actually reverse those odds."
Between the lines: Burns says the timing of the film — which lands around celebrations for America's 250th anniversary — was a happy coincidence.