The Civil War

Read more of Ken Burns' interview about our history, The Civil War and his distinctive style of filmmaking

A newly re-mastered version of Ken Burns' epic film returns to TV12
Edited by Mary Eileen O'Connor

In 1990, television viewers across the country were transfixed by filmmaker Ken Burns' epic documentary The Civil War.

Never before had a film explored the scope and impact of this war in such vivid and intimate detail, introducing the people, the places and the circumstances that shaped and defined this bloody conflict.

Beginning Sunday, September 22 at 8 p.m. on WHYY TV12, viewers will see a completely re-mastered version of the award-winning film in its entirety. This updated version includes a new introduction by Burns, special interviews with historians Shelby Foote, Stanley Crouch and George Will and new behind-the-scenes material, including a side-by-side demonstration of the re-mastered footage.

Here, Burns describes the challenges of making The Civil War, how technology helped make the film better than ever and why the war is still a part of our lives:

Q: When you undertook The Civil War, you were tackling the pivotal event in American history. Were you ever daunted at all in the enormity of the task?

KB: You know, when I look back at The Civil War experience, I can't believe that I wasn't daunted every single day by the task. And the only excuse or explanation I have is that I must have been incredibly naive and optimistic but I remember I once asked Shelby Foote in an interview about Ulysses S. Grant, and he said Grant had what they called "four o'clock in the morning" courage, which meant you could wake him up at four in the morning and tell him that the enemy had turned his right flank, and he'd be as cool as a cucumber.

I think we all, as filmmakers -- but I know, especially myself -- developed a kind of "four o'clock in the morning" courage as each day you woke up with a gasp and a gulp: "What have we taken on? How can we possibly understand and represent this most defining event to the country?"

Q: The Civil War that viewers will see has been digitally re-mastered. Can you talk about that process a little bit and how it will enhance the experience?

KB: I have always shot in film and, up until recently, edited on film and actually finished on film, made film prints. We still shoot on film, but that 16mm image can get pretty bumpy and pretty grainy, particularly as you make subsequent copies.

The Civil War was broadcast before a good deal of the new digital technology was able to improve and stabilize the quality of images. It was before we were able to have both the resources and the ability to have a full stereo track. So what we've gone and done...[is] went back and, frame by frame, improved every single image of The Civil War with this new digital process. And so we are now seeing the film about as close to our original work print as it came out of the camera. And it's a startling thing.

Q: Twelve years later, The Civil War remains the highest-rated program in the history of public television, and seemingly every month, there's a new volume that comes out on some aspect of the Civil War. Do you have a theory as to why this epic event resonates so much with Americans?

KB: Shelby Foote said it best. The war defined us. It made us who we are, for good and for ill. Everything that came before it led up to it, and in many ways, everything since has been in some way, however faint, a consequence of it. We're constantly struggling as a nation, particularly in these challenged times, for a sense of national self-definition.

And paradoxically, it's the moment where we try to rip ourselves in two that we come to terms with the greatest sense of unity that we've ever had. And that, in the end, is why the Civil War has always been and will always be the central subject in American history.