Watch Full Films | American Experience | Official Site

Golden Gate Bridge

Aired May 3, 2004

On May 27, 1937, 200,000 people thronged to the newly-completed Golden Gate bridge and walked, climbed, skated or cycled across. After 18 years of struggles to complete the bridge, San Francisco's jubilance was unrestrained.

More

Patriots Day

Aired April 19, 2004

The film follows the re-enactors as they shuffle between their 18th- and 21st-century lives. It captures them building sets, planning military engagements, drilling, rehearsing battles as well as celebrating Thanksgiving, moving house and working. In the end it shows that patriotism, a love of costumes, civic duty, an urge to perform and a passion for history all play a role in these Americans' lives.

More

Emma Goldman

Aired May 21, 2019 | 53 min

A notorious lecturer, fearless writer, and merciless publisher, Goldman was one of the most controversial women in America.

Chapter 1 Trailer More

Tupperware!

Aired February 9, 2004

In the 1950s, American women discovered they could earn thousands — even millions — of dollars from bowls that burped.

Trailer More

Remember the Alamo

Aired February 2, 2004

In the early 1830s Texas was about to explode. Although ruled by Mexico, the region was home to more than 20,000 U.S. settlers agitated by what they saw as restrictive Mexican policies. Mexican officials, concerned with illegal trading and immigration, were prepared to fight hard to keep the province under their control. Caught in the middle were the area's 4,000 Mexican Texans or Tejanos.

More

Citizen King

Aired January 19, 2004

In August 1963, a 34-year-old preacher galvanized millions with his dream for an America free of racism.

More

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War

Aired January 12, 2004 | 120 min

Spanning the momentous years from 1863 to 1877, Reconstruction tracks the extraordinary stories of ordinary Americans — Southern and Northern, white and black — as they struggle to shape new lives for themselves in a world turned upside down.

More

The Center of the World: New York, A Documentary Film

Aired September 8, 2003

New York: The Center of the World examines the rise and fall of the World Trade Center -- from its conception in the post-World War II economic boom, through its controversial construction in the 1960s and 1970s, to its tragic demise in the fall of 2001 and extraordinary response of the city in its aftermath. It is the eighth episode of filmmaker Ric Burns' award-winning series New York: A Documentary Film.

More

Murder at Harvard

Aired July 14, 2003

Inspired by a book by historian Simon Schama, Murder at Harvard uses drama and documentary to re-examine this grisly episode.

More

Bataan Rescue

Aired July 7, 2003

In late 1941, tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers fought a desperate battle to defend the Bataan peninsula in the Philippines from the Japanese. When they lost, they were marched to prison camps in sweltering heat through a mosquito-infested jungle with little or no food or water. Many thousands died along the way.

More

Seabiscuit

Aired April 21, 2003

One of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history, Seabiscuit was the long shot that captured America's heart during the Depression.

Trailer More

Daughter from Danang

Aired April 7, 2003

Daughter From Danang cuts between mother and daughter as the two recall the pain of their separation, and retraces Hiep's journey from Vietnam to Pulaski, Tennessee, where she is adopted by a single woman and renamed Heidi.

More