When they landed at Plymouth almost 400 years ago, the Pilgrims faced countless challenges. Their story is the bedrock of the American experiment, but the facts of their survival have long been tangled up with the myths. (Rebroadcast)
In a documentary on the PBS series American Experience, filmmaker Ric Burns tells the tale of a small group of extreme people whom history and myth record as the founders of a new nation. The Pilgrims faced countless challenges when they came to the New World in 1620. The fact of their survival and success is not only commemorated every November, it also exists in the very myth of America’s origins. Burns joins to winnow fact from fiction as we explore the true story of the Pilgrims.
“The Pilgrims” by filmmaker Ric Burns is currently streaming online at American Experience.
Ric Burns is a documentary filmmaker and writer. Among his films are New York: A Documentary Film; Death and the Civil War; and Into the Deep: America, Whaling, and the World. He wrote and directed the new American Experience documentary The Pilgrims.
