{"id":1274,"date":"2026-06-03T16:37:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2026-06-03T16:37:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T16:37:34","slug":"how-ken-burns-and-david-schmidts-the-american-revolution-documentary-lends-a-voice-to-the-underrepresented-and-took-10-years-to-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1274","title":{"rendered":"How Ken Burns and David Schmidt\u2019s \u2018The American Revolution\u2019 Documentary Lends a Voice to the Underrepresented and Took 10 Years to Make"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIt\u2019s a total coincidence that Ken Burns and David Schmidt\u2019s six-part documentary series \u201cThe American Revolution\u201d was released by PBS in November 2025, less than a year ahead of the United States\u2019 250th anniversary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThat wasn\u2019t even on anyone\u2019s horizon,\u201d said Burns while talking with Variety\u2019s<\/em> Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize then that it would be a 10-year labor, that we would explode all of the preconceptions that we have and that we would come out as we did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBurns and Schmidt, who produced and co-directed the series, joined Tangcay to discuss the decade-long journey of creating the PBS series for Variety\u2019s<\/em> For the Love of the Craft, diving into how the team assembled a team of expert researchers, recruited an all-star cast of actors and why they decided to tackle the \u201cvery complex narrative of the most consequential revolution in history.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLooking back, Burns is surprised they completed the series given just how comprehensive they needed to be. <\/p>\n

\n\tA key challenge for the filmmakers was the absence of photographs or newsreels, which required them to \u201crecalibrate a good deal of how we approach the production of such a big mammoth story and to rely more on reenactments, not to reenact a particular battle, but to collect a critical mass of imagery that we treat in a more impressionistic way,\u201d said Burns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo accomplish such a feat, they recruited a cast of some of \u201cthe greatest actors on the world,\u201d whom Burns called the project\u2019s \u201csecret weapons.\u201d \u201cI think this documentary has the greatest cast list of any film or television series that\u2019s ever been made,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had to not just try to tell the mythology again, but to make dimensional those boldfaced names like George Washington. They\u2019re not just statues. If you make them real, then then they are examples that we can try to be like.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tTo find the right historians, the team did research to identify scholars of Native America history, the British empire and more. \u201cIn the end, I think it\u2019s 18 scholars that we interviewed and 24 that we used, and that includes writers and popular historians of the period,\u201d said Burns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was a joy in making this film and a feeling of collaboration with basically everybody, including, the 150+ characters that we use and their voiceover in the film,\u201d said Schmidt. \u201cThey committed their truth to paper and and to memory, and we\u2019re working with that, but we\u2019re also working with the archivists who preserved that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series incorporates the often overlooked stories of African Americans and Native Americans. \u201cThe American Revolution\u201d lends a voice to how they worked in military units. It also examines the crucial role of women. Schmidt said, \u201cIt\u2019s really just restoring them to the position of primacy that they offered in the time\u201d He added, \u201cThis is a revolution that took many more people than the 55 white men in Philadelphia whose names we might know and whose images we might recognize from. There were millions of people affected by this war.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd though the documentary\u2019s coordination with the country\u2019s anniversary was coincidental, it\u2019s an extremely timely moment to watch the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMark Twain is famously supposed to have said, \u2018History doesn\u2019t repeat itself, but it rhymes,\u2019\u201d said Burns. \u201cIn every film we\u2019ve made, there have been lots of rhymes. It\u2019s been pretty spectacular, the way in which the story of the American Revolution and the beginnings of the notions of liberty, of freedom and of citizenship are all now at the forefront as we discuss it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s total coincidence that \u201cThe American Revolution” was released by PBS less than a year ahead of the U.S.\u2019s 250th anniversary.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[1227,1228],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artisans","tag-ken-burns","tag-the-american-revolution"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Ken Burns and David Schmidt\u2019s \u2018The American Revolution\u2019 Documentary Lends a Voice to the Underrepresented and Took 10 Years to Make - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1274\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Ken Burns and David Schmidt\u2019s \u2018The American Revolution\u2019 Documentary Lends a Voice to the Underrepresented and Took 10 Years to Make - 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