September 17-21 & September 24-28, 8 PM

The Vietnam War, a new 10-part, 18-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, will premiere September 17, 2017, on PBS stations nationwide. The first five episodes will air nightly from Sunday, September 17, through Thursday, September 21, and the final five episodes will air nightly from Sunday, September 24, through Thursday, September 28. Each episode will premiere at 8:00 p.m. ET with a repeat broadcast immediately following the premiere.

Ten years in the making, Burns and Novick tell the story of the Vietnam War in this immersive, epic narrative as it has never before been told on film. The Vietnam War features testimony from nearly 100 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.

“The Vietnam War was a decade of agony that took the lives of more than 58,000 Americans,” Burns said. “Not since the Civil War have we as a country been so torn apart. There wasn’t an American alive then who wasn’t affected in some way — from those who fought and sacrificed in the war, to families of service members and POWs, to those who protested the war in open conflict with their government and fellow citizens. More than 40 years after it ended, we can’t forget Vietnam, and we are still arguing about why it went wrong, who was to blame and whether it was all worth it.”

“We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy. Ken and I have tried to shed new light on the war by looking at it from the bottom up, the top down and from all sides,” Novick said. “In addition to dozens of Americans who shared their stories, we interviewed many Vietnamese on both the winning and losing sides, and were surprised to learn that the war remains as painful and unresolved for them as it is for us. Within this almost incomprehensibly destructive event, we discovered profound, universal human truths, as well as uncanny resonances with recent events.” 

 

Some highlights to look forward to:

  • rarely seen, digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe
  • photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th century
  • historic television broadcasts and evocative home movies
  • revelatory audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations
  • new, original music written and recorded by Academy Award-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
  • new music arranged and performed by Grammy Award-winning cellist Yo-Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble
  • more than 120 popular songs that define the era, including tracks from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, Ben E. King, Phil Ochs, Donovan, Johnny Cash, Barry McGuire, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, Otis Redding, Santana, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, The Temptations, Booker T. and the M.G.s, Pete Seeger and more

The Vietnam War rounds out a trilogy of Florentine Films’ exploration of American wars that began with Burns’s landmark series, The Civil War (1990), followed by Burns and Novick’s acclaimed seven-part series about the World War II, The War (2007). 

Viewers are encouraged to join the conversation with the hashtag #VietnamWarPBS

 

Watch the trailer: