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Ken Burns is now considered beyond being a filmmaker; he is a brand, an unparalleled production entity. When he has television endeavor premiering on the PBS network, all desire a part of him.

He participated in “an astonishing number of podcasts”, he notes, wrapping up of his extensive publicity circuit comprising four dozen cities, dozens of preview events and hundreds of interviews. “With podcasts numbering in the hundreds of millions, I feel I’ve participated in a substantial portion.”

Fortunately the filmmaker is incredibly dynamic, equally articulate in interviews as he is productive in the editing room. The 72-year-old has traveled from Monticello to popular podcasts to talk about his latest monumental work: The American Revolution, a comprehensive multi-part historical examination that occupied ten years of his career and arrived recently through the public broadcasting service.

Classic Documentary Style

Like slow cooking in today’s rapid-consumption era, this documentary series proudly conventional, more redolent of traditional war documentaries than the era of online content new media formats.

For the documentarian, whose entire filmography exploring national heritage spanning various American subjects, its origin story is not just another subject but foundational. “I said this to my co-director Sarah Botstein during our discussions, and she shared this view: no future work will carry greater importance,” Burns contemplates by phone from New York.

Comprehensive Scholarly Work

Burns and his collaborators and screenwriter Geoffrey Ward drew upon countless written sources and primary source materials. Multiple academic experts, representing diverse viewpoints, offered expert analysis along with leading scholars from a range of other fields like African American history, first nations scholarship and imperial studies.

Signature Documentary Style

The style of the series will feel familiar to fans of historical documentaries. The characteristic technique included slow pans and zooms over historical images, generous use of period music featuring talent reading diaries, letters and speeches.

Those projects established the filmmaker cemented his status; a generation later, presently the respected veteran of historical films, he can attract any actor he chooses. Appearing alongside Burns at a New York gathering, acclaimed writer Lin-Manuel Miranda commented: “Nobody declines an invitation from Ken Burns.”

Extraordinary Talent

The extended filming period provided advantages concerning availability. Filming occurred in studios, at historical sites and remotely via Zoom, a tool embraced throughout the health crisis. Burns recounts collaborating with actor Josh Brolin, who found a few free hours during his travels to record his lines portraying the founding father before flying off to his next engagement.

Brolin is joined by numerous acclaimed actors, respected performing veterans, emerging and established stars, household names and rising talent, accomplished dramatic artists, international acting community, versatile character actors, Wendell Pierce, Matthew Rhys, Liev Schreiber, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep.

The filmmaker continues: “Honestly, this could represent the finest ensemble gathered for any production. Their work is exceptional. Selection wasn’t based on fame. I got so angry when somebody said, ‘So why the celebrities?’. I responded, ‘These are performers.’ They represent global acting excellence and they animate historical material.”

Multifaceted Story

Still, the absence of living witnesses, photography and newsreels compelled the production to depend substantially on the written word, combining personal accounts of multiple revolutionary participants. This methodology permitted to show spectators not only to the “bold-faced names” of that era along with multiple who are seminal to the story”, several participants remain visually unknown.

Burns also indulged his particular enthusiasm for geography and cartography. “I have great affection for cartography,” he observes, “with greater cartographic content throughout this series versus earlier productions I’ve done combined.”

Global Significance

Filmmakers captured footage across multiple important places throughout the continent plus English locations to document environmental context and collaborated substantially with living history participants. All these elements combine to tell a story more violent, complex and globally significant versus conventional understanding.

The documentary argues, was no mere parochial quarrel over land, taxation and representation. Instead the film portrays a brutal conflict that eventually involved multiple global powers and surprisingly represented termed “the noble aspirations of humankind”.

Civil War Reality

What had begun as a jumble of grievances aimed at the crown by American colonists across thirteen rebellious territories rapidly became a bloody domestic struggle, setting brother against brother and creating local enmities. In episode two, academic Alan Taylor comments: “The greatest misconception about the American Revolution involves believing it represented a consolidating event for colonists. This ignores the truth that Americans fought each other.”

Nuanced Understanding

In his view, the independence account that “for most of us is drowning in sentimentality and wistful remembrance and remains shallow and insufficiently honors the historical reality, all contributors and the widespread bloodshed.”

It was, he contends, a movement that announced the transformative concept of inherent human rights; a bloody domestic struggle, separating rebels and supporters; and a global war, the fourth in a series of wars between imperial nations for the “prize of North America”.

Contingent Historical Events

The filmmaker also sought {to rediscover the