After a decade of filming for his new docuseries The American Revolution, Ken Burns begins with Ben Franklin and positions Philadelphia right at the heart of this epic story, writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Burns previously explored the Founding Father in his 2022 PBS documentary Benjamin Franklin, which helped shape various elements of his latest project.
Burns, along with his co-directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, focused on the foundational ideas behind the American Revolution in the latest project, which led them to begin with one of the world’s oldest democracies, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The governing body was made up of six Indigenous nations, and inspired Franklin, who proposed this as a model for the American union nearly two decades before the Declaration of Independence.
“Benjamin Franklin [developed a] fascination with the Iroquois Confederacy, the Haudenosaunee, as it was called … that had been working as a functioning democracy for centuries,” said Burns. “He thought, ‘Oh, maybe we can do that, too.’”
That point is where the six-part, twelve-hour documentary begins. It will premiere on PBS on Sunday, November 16, shortly before the Semiquincentennial celebration in 2026.
Read more about The American Revolution and the heavy emphasis it has on Ben Franklin and Philadelphia in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
_____
