Before PBS Disappears: Watch ‘The American Revolution’

“The American Revolution” is coming to PBS this fall, and it has a Pensacola—Bernardo de Gálvez, whom we celebrate with a statue on North Palafox Street.  Our local public television station WSRE is inviting the public to a free preview screening event at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 21, in the Jean & Paul Amos Performance Studio at Pensacola State College. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Kathleen DuVal, who appears in the new documentary film series from Ken Burns, will speak following the film.

• Details: “The American Revolution” is a six-part, 12-hour documentary series that explores the country’s founding struggle and its eight-year War for Independence. It will premiere on Sunday, Nov. 16, and air for six consecutive nights through Friday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. on WSRE. The full series will be available to stream beginning Sunday, Nov. 16, at wsre.org and on the PBS app.

The much-anticipated series was directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by Burns’ long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward. The filmmakers and PBS scheduled the broadcast for 2025, the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, which began in the spring of 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

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DuVal contributed to the production and in the film speaks about Spanish military leader Bernardo de Gálvez and how events that took place along the Gulf Coast, including the Siege of Pensacola, affected the outcome of the American Revolutionary War.

• “The new Ken Burns series reveals the American Revolution in all of its complexity, including the vital role that Florida played. I am thrilled to be coming to Pensacola to talk about the Spanish, the British, and how the Battle of Pensacola changed the course of history,” said DuVal.

In her book “Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution,” DuVal tells the forgotten story of the American Revolution on the Gulf Coast: “a story without minutemen, without founding fathers, without rebels. It reveals a different war with unexpected participants, forgotten outcomes, and surprising winners and losers.”

Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award and finalist for the George Washington Book Prize, “Independence Lost” was first released in 2015. In commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary and DuVal’s appearance in “The American Revolution,” Penguin Random House is reissuing the book this fall.

The first 100 to register for the Oct. 21 preview screening will receive a copy of the new edition at the event. Admission is free. Register online at wsre.org/events or at eventbrite.com.

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