American Experience has been honored with the 2013 Eric Barnouw Award for its recent film, Death and the Civil War. This is the 12th time an American Experience production has received this honor.

From acclaimed filmmaker Ric Burns, Death and the Civil War examines the many ways the staggering death tolls of the Civil War permanently altered the character of the republic, and the psyche of the American people.  The work of contending with death on an unprecedented scale propelled extraordinary changes in the inner and outer life of Americans – posing challenges for which there were no ready answers when the war began  – challenges that called forth remarkable and eventually heroic efforts as Americans worked to improvise new solutions, new institutions, new ways of coping with death on an unimaginable scale. Based on Drew Gilpin Faust’s groundbreaking book, This Republic of Suffering, the film was broadcast in conjunction with the 150^th anniversary of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history.

American Experience has been honored with a George Foster Peabody Award, widely considered the most prestigious award for electronic media. Three American Experience films were singled out to represent the series’ body of work: Triangle Fire, telling the story a deadly workplace accident that forever changed the industry of the American factory; Freedom Riders, recounting the bravery of black and white Americans who took a stand against racism in one of the Civil Rights Movement's first decisive victories; and Stonewall Uprising, documenting 1969 protests that marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around theworld. These three documentaries will be honored under the banner of American Experience as a series.

It was a total surprise and complete pleasure to be at this year's Primetime Emmy Creative Arts Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, where Freedom Riders swept every category it was entered in and took home three Emmys.

This week the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE staff received word that Earth Days had been awarded the Maeda Prize in theJapan Prize awards honoring international educational media. You can visit the awards website here. Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), Japan’s national public broadcaster, hosts the Japan Prize awards, which have been held annually since 1965.

This isn’t our first film in the past year to gain international acclaim. In November, The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer will vie for a Grierson Award for “Best Science Documentary.” The documentary was broadcast in the UK on BBC 4 in 2009, shortly after it aired on PBS. Similarly, other AMERICAN EXPERIENCE programs have enjoyed extensive exposure overseas airing on the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, RTE in Ireland, Arte in France and Germany, the ARD and Spiegel TV in Germany,Sveriges Television in Sweden, NRK Norway, YLE Finland, DR in Denmark, RAI in Italy, TVE and TV3 in Spain, NHK in Japan,EBS in Korea, SBS and ABC in Australia to name a few. So what explains AMERICAN EXPERIENCE appeal to overseas audiences?

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