>> The American Revolution.

A new film from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt tells the extraordinary story of the Birth of the United States.

But if you think you're familiar with that story, think again, more than 9 years in the making this 6 part 12, our documentary series tells the Tale of the country's founding struggle from viewpoints.

You haven't seen before.

It begins with a reminder that the United States we now know was not the first nation here.

>> Long before 13 British colonies made themselves into the United States.

The 6 nations of the Iroquois Confederacy Seneca.

Okay.

You got Onondaga Tusker Oneida and Mohawk had created a union of their that they called the hold in the show me a democracy flourished for centuries.

>> Joining us now with more about this monumental project.

Our filmmakers, Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein.

Welcome to Chicago tonight.

Glad to have you both here.

It's good to be back there grass on this massive project is quite the cover and longtime sure it has.

So as we just heard, you begin with a different confederation of states, not so much the colonies that we know becoming United States, but specifically Native American nations that long predated the American revolution.

How important was it to begin with that context, Well, I think, you know what we're taught in grammar school is that the American revolution is about taxes and representation.

And that's true.

But it's also about.

>> Native American land.

And I I thought it was interesting as we learn more and more about it, that Benjamin Franklin had himself been inspired by the Hood initiative.

Is this Iroquois Confederacy and their model that had worked for a long time as a model for the United States.

And he convenes 7 of the 13 colonies in Albany drew a picture of a snake cut into pieces under dire warning.

Join or die.

And then we just realize maybe that shouldn't be in the body of the film.

It may be at the very beginning so that we could realize that with the revolution is is a World War, a civil war and a war essentially over the prize of North America.

And what is the prize?

This land?

What and that land is already occupied by 13 British colonies super imposed over the land of British of Native nations and to the anymore.

Native nations that are extraordinarily complicated groups, each individual and is different from one.

Another is say France is from Belgian and we want to make sure that was understood that at the heart that this is about moving into this new space.

Pence Laney.

It for is that so much more fun than many of us really And and many people don't fully appreciate.

Once you get into the war part, right?

Just how savage that conflict is.

>> Here's a clip discussing the aftermath of the battle of Bunker Hill in June of 17, 75.

>> It's for the most awful hours of combat in American military history.

There are 1000 British casualties that day.

Are 220 some British debt.

40% of the attacking force was killed.

2 injured.

40%.

That's horrendous.

The high casualty rate.

It is the highest casualty rate for the British army for the state.

Some in 1916.

>> It is unbelievably >> about time we hear from one expert who says part of the Revolutionary War report of the Revolutionary History has been sanitized.

What are we mis understanding?

We're forgetting about the revolution.

>> Well, I think, you know, we forget that the American revolution at least 2 things happening at the same time.

One is huge revolution of ideas and how government might be structured and who might lead that government and who might be responsible in selecting coup rules that government and the other is a terribly broody brutal.

Very complicated as Ken was just saying, 18th Century war in 18 th-century war is really terrible and awful and and scary and violent and dark and in order to really understand our founding story.

I think you really have to brave the 2 together.

You have to understand the revolution for war of ideas and ideals and then the war that was fought for those ideals and principles to have a have a run.

>> Buchanan, other conversations.

You talked about democracy being sort of an unintended consequence of the revolution.

What mean by So the idea is, first of all, there's a quarrel between Englishman that gets broken out into natural rights.

It's the and so they're thinking of arguments about why Britain is wrong.

And all of a sudden they're no longer saying where you said this and you deserve But human beings themselves by being human beings deserve that natural Jefferson is going to say all men are created.

Equal value owns other human beings.

The cat is out of Now.

Human beings are going to have to be equal even though it takes 4 score 9 years have been in the United States.

That's over.

So things are beginning to change and more in the world.

And the American revolution is leading that change of how these ideas are moving.

So this assumption of democracy is that these people are going to come together and create a republic.

They mean of an elite almost like the example that kind of we inherit from from Greece and to a lesser extent, Rome.

But the people are going to fight and die and win this war or so-called ordinary people and they're going to have to they're going to deserve something.

So you can say that democracy is not an object of the American revolution.

It's a consequence of that.

And there's a big difference of that.

And we are all the beneficiaries of that big difference.

>> So obviously lots of voices, reenactments footage over 9 years of work.

We hear a number of very familiar celebrity voices how do you think the series is different from any other document reviewed?

And well, you know, first of all, goes back to what Sarah and you were talking about with with the violence.

You know, if you've got to photographs, if you get the newsreels, the violence is proven.

But if you've got a painting and 70's got Havana and maybe there's even a little trickle into field they seem different for us.

>> It is.

They are very much like us.

So I I think this is a story about how you tell all the real story of the revolution and you get under the surface of it and and forget the distance and time and a lot of it doing reenactments.

A lot of it is asking.

>> The finest actors in the world to read off camera.

And I think we have that better cast than any film that's ever been made or television series ever.

That helped bring alive.

Not just the familiar top down folks and you get to know Washington a little bit better with more dimension.

dozens scores of other people that you've never heard of.

Sometimes they're teenagers, sometimes a Native American.

Sometimes free or enslaved black people.

Here women who are half the population and are central to the success of the revolution and to keeping the resistance alive, whose stories are told, but also all the other players in this group, global struggle, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish English, all of their soldiers.

>> All of their kings, all of their ministers.

And so what you do is by having all of these different voices, you give a sense that this is what really took place.

And instead of putting your thumb on one side or the other, you're an umpire calling and strikes and everybody's got their play.

Everybody understands their role in it and you can make it the complex.

I think most interesting story we've ever tried to tell.

>> So we've got another clip.

This one about the belief of those who are fighting for their independence.

Here's that.

>> I think to believe in America.

Rooted in the American revolution.

>> Is to believe in possibility.

>> That to me is the extraordinary about the Patriots side of the fight.

I think everybody on every side including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves.

>> The sense of possibility we're fighting for.

>> So, Sarah, when watching the film, there are times that you would expect the British to prevail in a particular battle.

And that's kind of what you know, we all learned in 5th grade as well.

You know, very well trained and organized been, you know, you expect him to win the battle and then the war.

But of course, that's not always what happens in We know that history has written what actually has happened.

What does that say about, you know, the the Americans who call themselves patriots at the time they misunderstood.

I don't think the Patriots were misunderstood as much as I think we don't understand how.

>> Absolutely unlikely it was that we were going to win.

How surprising it was that we were going to win, that we were able to throw off the biggest, most mighty military power in the world with the greatest navy in the world.

And we actually wouldn't have done that without the French.

But I think the Patriots were very successful as they moved from 17, 75 to 17.

81 down the eastern seaboard and rallying support, inspiring people.

I think the words of our declaration more meaningful.

I think the war nobody knew how it was going to turn out while it was being fought.

So we look back on it with a lot of ideas.

And I think we overlay the revolution even more than our other wars and are other moments in history with as can often says, a kind of sentimentality and where it's a distance because of the paintings, because of it's 250 years ago.

And the people who we know come down Sunday's paintings with wigs and, you know, they were young revolutionaries making it up as they went.

They didn't know how it was going to turn out.

People on the ground did know how it's going to turn out.

And it is really unlikely that we were able to do what we did.

Tell they're a little bit about the importance of the Native American nations as well as black people.

African-americans be free or enslaved for both sides of >> this war.

So I think, you know, you can't tell a story of America without widening the lens to see who is actually living here and who was fighting the war and who if that, whatever way the war went was going to be impacted by it.

And so in any film we make, we want to widen the lens and have people think about who's on the ground in the house next door to you who lives down the street and the Native American populations were vast and different and there were hundreds of them and they were not a monolith.

Just like no population as a monolith.

And free black people.

We're all different and the enslaved back and people made all kinds of very reasonable and rational decisions that, again, we look back and judge and more lies about when, in fact, it was very reasonable to side with the British.

It was very reasonable to be a patriot and was very reasonable to say.

What does this have to do with me and get out of the way as we see even today speaking of today because we're living through a tumultuous time, of course, which there's this, you know, bitter political division in the country right now.

>> Can as you're working on this film, was there any you know, of that deep division that you felt still resonates today?

Well, I think first of all, the one we're covering the American Revolution is deep Division.

We began this when Barack Obama and 13 months ago on his presidency.

So we've been watching the rhymes of history.

The echoes of history changes.

We've done it.

>> But here's the central thing.

When person is in a struggle, having great difficulty, they go to a professional and the professional wants to ask an essential question.

Where are you from?

Tell me your story.

Tell me about your parents.

How did you get to where you are right now?

Because that's the way we're going to unravel what's going on right now.

The difficulty you're having.

So if you go back in a time of great division and internal turmoil for an entire country, you go back to your origin story and find out where you begin, you might be able to find the pieces in which it's your less thrown out by how much division is.

There's always been division, but you might find the path back to how you solve that.

So we're hoping that if anything, this story does is help put the U.S.

back in the U.S.

and and permit a chance to celebrate the glories of what we invented.

This is the most important event in world history since the birth of Christ.

He changed the way people Everybody was a subject up until then and all of a sudden there are people who are citizens and the great responsibility that entails.

That's about as inspiring a story as I know.

And maybe it helps us get back to a place where there's less of that hand wringing less of the sky is falling.

Less of the sense of oh, it's so bad right now.

It's been a really bad.

It was bad in the revolution, a civil war.

It was bad during our civil war.

It's been bad at lots of different places that we've covered in the work that we've >> done together.

And so think there's a fundamental optimism.

When you study the past, there's also a fundamental sort of psychological therapy that takes place.

If we learn our origin story, we can help us get through this and begin to move on to the next grade phase, which is repair.

>> All right.

Around the it has been a pleasure and an honor to speak with you both.

Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, thank you so much for joining us.

Congrats on the documentary series.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

And the