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Ken Burns’ American Revolution hits this year
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Peter Coyote on narration along with basically every star in Hollywood for historical figure quotes:
Article: Washington, DC – January 9, 2025 – THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, a new six-part, 12-hour documentary series that explores the country's founding struggle and its eight-year War for Independence, will premiere on Sunday, November 16 and air for six consecutive nights through Friday, November 21st at 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS. The full series will be available to stream beginning Sunday, November 16 at PBS.org and on the PBS App.
The much-anticipated series, which has been in production for eight years, was directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward. The filmmakers and PBS scheduled the broadcast for 2025, the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, which began in the spring of 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION examines how America's founding turned the world upside-down. Thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic Coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired centuries of democratic movements around the globe.
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
"The American Revolution is one of the most important events in human history." said Ken Burns. "We went from being subjects to inventing a new concept, citizens, and set in motion democratic revolutions around the globe. As we prepare to celebrate the 250thanniversary of our founding, I'm hopeful that people throughout the country will come together to discuss the importance of this history and to appreciate even more what our ancestors did to secure our liberty and freedoms."
"Our film tells the remarkable history of the people who lived through the American Revolution, their everyday concerns, and their hopes, fears and failings," said Sarah Botstein (THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST, HEMINGWAY, THE VIETNAM WAR). "It's a surprising and deeply relevant story, one that is hugely important to understanding who we are as a country and a people. The Revolution changed how we think about government – creating new ideas about liberty, freedom, and democracy."
"The Revolution was eight years of uncertainty, hope, and terror, a brutal war that engaged millions of people in North America and beyond and left tremendous loss in its wake," said David Schmidt (BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE VIETNAM WAR). "At the same time, the Revolution also changed how Americans thought about themselves, their government, and what they were capable of achieving. The United States that emerged from the war was a nation few could have imagined before the shooting began in April 1775."
The Revolution began a movement for people around the world to imagine new and better futures for themselves, their nations, and for humanity. It opened the door to advance civil liberties and human rights, and it asked questions that we are still trying to answer today. "I think to believe in America, rooted in the American Revolution, is to believe in possibility," the historian Jane Kamensky says in the series. "Everybody, on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, had the sense of possibility worth fighting for."
Kamensky is one of dozens of scholars and writers who appear in the film or advised the production, including Rick Atkinson, Friederike Baer, Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk, Darren Bonaparte, Christopher Leslie Brown, Vincent Brown, Colin G. Calloway, Stephen Conway, Iris de Rode, Philip J. Deloria, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Kathleen DuVal, Joseph J. Ellis, Charles E. Frye, Annette Gordon-Reed, Don N. Hagist, William Hogeland, Maya Jasanoff, Edward G. Lengel, William E. Leuchtenberg, Jennifer Loren, Holly A. Mayer, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jeffrey Rosen, Claudio Saunt, Barnet Schecter, Stacy Schiff, Alan Taylor, Michael John Witgen, Kevin J. Weddle, Gordon S. Wood, Serena Zabin, and the late Bernard Bailyn.
Burns's long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward (THE VIETNAM WAR, JAZZ, BASEBALL, THE CIVIL WAR) wrote the script and is the primary author of the companion book, The American Revolution, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on November 11, 2025.
Led by the cinematographer Buddy Squires, the series features original footage that highlights the beauty and diversity of the North American landscape. The team shot in every season over the course of several years and at nearly a hundred locations, within and beyond the original 13 colonies, including at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, Colonial Williamsburg, Fort Ticonderoga, Jamestown Settlement, Minute Man National Historical Park, Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Mount Vernon, Valley Forge National Historical Park, the South Carolina backcountry, overseas in London and the English countryside, and elsewhere. The filmmakers also worked with extensive networks of reenactors to film troop movement and camp life.
The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, includes the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures, read by a cast of actors, including Adam Arkin, Jeremiah Bitsui, Corbin Bleu, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, Bill Camp, Tantoo Cardinal, Josh Charles, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Keith David, Hope Davis, Marcus Davis-Orrom, Bruce Davison, Leon Dische Becker, Alden Ehrenreich, Craig Ferguson, Morgan Freeman, Christian Friedel, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Michael Greyeyes, Jonathan Groff, Charlotte Hacke, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Lucas Hedges, Josh Hutcherson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gene Jones, Michael Keaton, Joe Keery, Joel Kinnaman, Tracy Letts, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Josh Lucas, Michael Mando, Carolyn McCormick, Lindsay Mendez, Tobias Menzies, Joe Morton, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Jon Proudstar, Matthew Rhys, LaTanya Richardson, Liev Schreiber, Chaske Spencer, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep, and Yul Vazquez, among others.
The film uses a wide variety of music, both from the period and newly composed pieces for the series, with recordings by Johnny Gandelsman, Rhiannon Giddens, Jennifer Kreisberg, David Cieri, Yo-Yo Ma, and many more. In addition to using hundreds of 18th-century maps, the filmmakers created and commissioned over a hundred new maps. There are also well over a thousand still images in the film, including paintings, letters, lithographs, and other archival materials, from museums, galleries, and libraries throughout the United States and abroad.
Jinzo Prime
Member
Just get Keith David to narrate the whole thing!
Donald mac Ronald
Member
Not on my watch. Jk.
Will definitely watch this. Love history. I don't feel like there has been many great documentaries on this, unless I'm wrong? Would be good if the war of 1812 would be covered too.
EviLore
did you watch ken's Vietnam documentary? I think thats the best war documentary I have seen so far.
Will definitely watch this. Love history. I don't feel like there has been many great documentaries on this, unless I'm wrong? Would be good if the war of 1812 would be covered too.
EviLore
did you watch ken's Vietnam documentary? I think thats the best war documentary I have seen so far.
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WhiteWaterM00se
Member
I love Ken Burns material. I wish he would go back and update the MLB and add a new episode for the last 20 years, with the steroid scandal, the Red Sox and Cubs winning the World Series and the Houston Astro's scandal and other material.
Aesius
Member
Anyone interested in this should also watch the HBO miniseries John Adams as a companion piece. One of the greatest miniseries of all time and up there, IMO, with Band of Brothers and Chernobyl, especially if you have an interest in American history. Giamatti is a phenomenal actor with tons of iconic roles, but John Adams is perhaps his magnum opus.
Yeah, Vietnam is excellent. The War, too.Not on my watch. Jk.
Will definitely watch this. Love history. I don't feel like there has been many great documentaries on this, unless I'm wrong? Would be good if the war of 1812 would be covered too.
Hari Seldon
Member
I really liked the DaVinci documentary. Just beautiful art with a ton of classic music playing. Very chill.
Futaleufu
Member
Yep, Giamatti was typecasted as the hysteric guy but in John Adams he is fantastic.
EverydayBeast
ChatShitGPT Alpha 0.001
All the deaths during the American Revolutionary War, Roughly **25,000 to 30,000 Americans** died during the Revolutionary War, which was about **1% of the colonial population at the time**—a staggering proportion when you consider the colonies had only about 2.5 million people.
Thurible
Member
Civil War is a must, I also liked his prohibition one. Dust bowl was also pretty good.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Civil War and Vietnam war are his two best in my opinion.
If you want a short one 4 hours, there is he Corpse of Discovery about Lewis and Clark. Also very good.
DKehoe
Member
Thanks!
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Just listen to this and take it in. Think of what it would take for you to write a letter this good.
Narrated by David McCullough, the single greatest history writer in American History.
DKehoe
Member
Incredible stuff, thanks for sharing. Letters like these are always so striking for a few reasons. It's a real, direct connection to that period, he wrote those exact words and now here we are listening to them almost 200 years later. It also highlights the humanity in these epic historical events, so often we just see the numbers involved in those battles but it's good to keep in mind that they were people just like us with hopes, fears and loved ones. It's remarkable that he could write so eloquently and nobly in the face of what he knew could be, and ultimately was, his end.
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poodaddy
Member
Fuckin onions in here man.....
Boo Who?
Gold Member
If you are a baseball fan, his 1994 doc, Baseball, is also very good.
Prohibition is a good shorter one to start with. Most people will know about the organized crime aspect to that time period but not much beyond that. Can learn a lot about how it tied in with the women's suffrage movement and the culture at the time.
The war docs like Civil War and WW2 and Vietnam require a major time investment but the payoff is worth it.
Ishma3L
Member
Dude, you're in for a treat
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Sardaukarama
Member
My first foray into Ken Burns when I landed on these shores was the civil war Documentary , I spent all weekend glued to the PBS channel watching it ,Absolutely fantastic tv !
It was even better that I live down the road from the Chickamauga Battlefield and I get to visit these fascinating places of American History
Atomicfear
Neo Member
the Vietnam doc is phenomenal. hard to match that. But it did have better contemporary music to work with.
Toots
Member
Very pleased to see this doc coming out and will watch it focusedly.
Good knowledge of the American independence war is mandatory to understand current forms of governance. It the seminal event of western democracy.
Im reading a book about secularism, and all the concepts that enabled secularism and contemporary democracy are found in the 1776 Declaration (and later in the 1789 Constitution), civil religion, inalienable rights, etc.
Of course us french made our Constitution just a little bit better when we wrote it in 1791, since it states that the human rights are not granted by God as in the US one, but by Man himself
Good knowledge of the American independence war is mandatory to understand current forms of governance. It the seminal event of western democracy.
Im reading a book about secularism, and all the concepts that enabled secularism and contemporary democracy are found in the 1776 Declaration (and later in the 1789 Constitution), civil religion, inalienable rights, etc.
Of course us french made our Constitution just a little bit better when we wrote it in 1791, since it states that the human rights are not granted by God as in the US one, but by Man himself
Diseased Yak
Gold Member
So excited for this! I've loved his documentaries for years now, the time and effort put into them is plainly visible on the screen.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
What if I told you most of the music in the Civil war doc was newer than the vietnam war music.
"Ashokan Farewell" /əˈʃoʊˌkæn/ is a musical piece composed by the American folk musician Jay Ungar in 1982. For many years, it served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps, run by Ungar and his wife Molly Mason, who named the tune after the Ashokan Field Campus (now the Ashokan Center) of SUNY New Paltz in Upstate New York.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokan_Farewell#cite_note-jayandmolly-1"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a>
The tune was used as the title theme of the 1990 PBS television documentary series, The Civil War. Despite its late date of composition, it was included in the 1991 compilation album, Songs of the Civil War.
Play this song when I die.
Rights being inalienable and endowed by the supreme creator of the universe, regardless of what any man decides thereafter, just hits harderOf course us french made our Constitution just a little bit better when we wrote it in 1791, since it states that the human rights are not granted by God as in the US one, but by Man himself
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Very pleased to see this doc coming out and will watch it focusedly.
Good knowledge of the American independence war is mandatory to understand current forms of governance. It the seminal event of western democracy.
Im reading a book about secularism, and all the concepts that enabled secularism and contemporary democracy are found in the 1776 Declaration (and later in the 1789 Constitution), civil religion, inalienable rights, etc.
Of course us french made our Constitution just a little bit better when we wrote it in 1791, since it states that the human rights are not granted by God as in the US one, but by Man himself
15 constitutions
Since 1791, France has had a total of 15 constitutions. The most recent constitution was adopted in 1958, establishing the Fifth Republic.
Even the French don't think their constitutions were that good.
If man grants your rights, man can take your rights.
Toots
Member
You are underestimating how highly french people think of themselvesRights being inalienable and endowed by the supreme creator of the universe, regardless of what any man decides thereafter, just hits harder
If God can garantee it, a french can do too
Jokes aside it is true and it is one of the huge point of debate in France at the time, how to preserve the sacred character of the rights provided. The guy in charge of thinking about this (and of writing the napoleonic code which eventually became french civil code) in France was named Portalis, and according to the author im reading he thought that France was so impregnated by catholic moral that we could actually make without God and still behave morally. France was called the Church little sister for a long time and at some point Popes resided in the french (beautiful) city of Avignon so it made sense, even tho a couple centuries later anyone can see how needed transcendence is so people don't act like goddam animals. Paris is so dirty those days, people just putting their trash in the street without care, i wish divine punishment was in their minds still.
You could not see a joke coming if it was written in the preamble to the US Constitution could you ?
Read the full wikipedia article you'll see constitution change it is not a problem of being good or bad, it is a problem of being useful at some point in time. The french hates the fifth republic constitution a lot more than the others, everyone here wants to do the 6th republic now. Still the fifth was useful at the time of De Gaulle (if only to make him come back to rule).
Also just so you know, god doesn't grant you rights, man grants himself right and then justify their sacredness by god.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
You are underestimating how highly french people think of themselves
If God can garantee it, a french can do too
This is a good joke. The other statement was written by someone who cannot convey a joke with words. Do some MIME stuff or something.
Toots
Member
Both statement were made by me.
Also i sincerely doubt your expertise since you would not be able to convey a joke if it rode with you at night from Boston to Lexington with redcoats hot on your asses.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Both statement were made by me.
Also i sincerely doubt your expertise since you would not be able to convey a joke if it rode with you at night from Boston to Lexington with redcoats hot on your asses.
I just assume you have multiple personality disorder.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Atomicfear
Neo Member
You're right- great music
Donald mac Ronald
Member
France has this weird idea that anyone in France is french so they don't properly take census's. France has around 11% Muslims now. Their prison population is 40 to 70% Muslim based on estimates. That's insane
Toots
Member
You don't even know the half of it
This crisis will be the one that makes us forgoe Vth Constitution for the VIth. And that is good for us french.
Vth constitution, which was tailor made for De Gaulle, give too much executive power to the president. If the guy in charge is not a honest person, it means everyone else is screwed, as we see with macron not wanting to move an inch on his political views or give an opportunity to other parties (mostly the unified left who won the last legislative elections last year). Macron only appoint right wing prime minister who then appoint right wing government. This government then is censored since it doesn't represent the representative assembly (left unified front won the last legislative elections). Macron then does the same thing again. Last week he appointed a prime minister (a non name politician from his own party since no one else would blindly follow his directives). The dude resigned after like 2 days saying the condition to work aren't good enough to do anything. So what does macron do ? He waits a week, reappoint the same prime minister who this time says, conditions are good they can work out something. We are walking on our collective heads to make sense of anything politically in France currently, because the only thing who could make sense is macron resigning. But it seems too much for a lot of people, a bit like the pope resigning. It cannot be. At the same time macron is the least appreciated president of the fifth republic, so if one guy could be ousted out of l'élysée it is him.
Next few weeks will be very interesting.
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Toots
Member
Truly our biggest problem in france isn't islamism, we have a lot more of arabs coming from north africa, a very moderate place compared to the middle east (only algerians are really braindead religious extremists there). They are 2nd or 3rd gen migrants and their problems are western people problems. Although it is starting to change and you can see more and more of weird middle eastern aliens (of the xenomorph kind), walking aimlessly in the streets, or just sleeping wherever with their little tents (that they obviously cannot afford by themselves
)UK has 1st gen migrants that look like they come from another goddam galaxy, don't seem to speak any civilised langage and openly say they don't care about western laws and don't want to follow them, and all this with the blessing of the government and police force. This is really bad.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Truly our biggest problem in france isn't islamism, we have a lot more of arabs coming from north africa, a very moderate place compared to the middle east (only algerians are really braindead religious extremists there). They are 2nd or 3rd gen migrants and their problems are western people problems. Although it is starting to change and you can see more and more of weird middle eastern aliens (of the xenomorph kind), walking aimlessly in the streets, or just sleeping wherever with their little tents (that they obviously cannot afford by themselves
UK has 1st gen migrants that look like they come from another goddam galaxy, don't seem to speak any civilised langage and openly say they don't care about western laws and don't want to follow them, and all this with the blessing of the government and police force. This is really bad.
La Pen will save you.
Toots
Member
She is a crook and a politician so i don't believe she really care about the common folk.
If i had to bet i'd say she'd rather keep the liberal status quo than implement the radical changes we need. She's hard on immigration in theory but it could be only talk, since nowdays maybe a quarter of her party is composed of those 2nd and 3rd gen migrants form north africa that are mostly westernized but still won't vote for someone who says "lets get arabs out of france".
Only one who can save us are We, The People if you catch my drift. Maybe We, The People will have to go get the next politician in charge and remind him who he is supposed to represent.