NARROWSBURG, NY — Since the 1970s, Ken Burns has been making documentary films and television series that dive deep into American history and culture. They’ve subjects ranging from baseball (1994) to jazz (2001) to the Dust Bowl (2012).

But war figures most prominently in Burns’s body of work. He is most famous for his Civil War series (1990), which renewed an interest in documentaries. Burns also took on the Vietnam War (2017) and World War II (2007), 

Now in production is “The American Revolution,” which has brought Burns’s new passion project to Narrowsburg, NY. Florentine Films set up Thursday at the Fort Delaware Museum, which for generations has taught visitors about the pioneers who settled in the Upper Delaware Valley in the mid-18th-century. The fort includes a log cabin, blacksmith shop, stockade, blockhouses, a shed armory, and herb garden.

According to publicity about the film, the six-part, 12-hour series “on America’s founding struggle will present the story of the men and women of the Revolutionary generation, their humanity in victory and defeat, and the crisis that they lived through.” Besides Burns, the directors are Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt.

Florentine Films, a production company founded by four documentary filmmakers— Ken Burns, Roger Sherman, Buddy Squires, and Larry Hott—spent the day on Thursday, July 18, filming at Fort Delaware. It will be some time, though, before we’ll get to see the finished film, which isn’t scheduled for broadcast until fall 2025 on PBS.

‘A republic that still endures’

The film’s publicity says the American Revolution “was at once a war for independence, a war of conquest, a civil war, and a world war, fought by neighbors on American farms and between global powers an ocean or more away. It impacted millions from Vermont’s Green Mountains to the swamps of South Carolina, from Indian Country to the Iberian Peninsula. In defeating the British Empire and giving birth to a new nation, the American Revolution turned the world upside-down. Thirteen colonies on the Atlantic Coast united in rebellion, won their independence, and established a republic that still endures.”

The many Burns documentaries that Florentine Films produces include “The Brooklyn Bridge.” The production crew filming at Fort Delaware on Thursday was excited to hear about the Brooklyn Bridge’s small-but-mighty precursor, the Roebling Bridge, right down the road on Scenic Route 97. Built in 1849, it’s the oldest existing wire suspension bridge in the United States, spanning the Upper Delaware River to connect Minisink Ford, NY, and Lackawaxen, PA. The crew members said they wanted to head there after filming.

The Roebling Bridge—also known as Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct—was not featured in the Brooklyn Bridge documentary.

The only American Revolutionary battle site on the Upper Delaware is also at Minisink Ford, and is now the Minisink Battleground County Park, where, on July 22, the battle’s 245th anniversary will be commemorated.