northern california in the old region. the work that we do, along with our partners and the work we do here spreads out and has a ripple effect, touching jobs across the country. 827,000s up to nearly jobs at the port and at its partners across united states. our city store staff recently traveled to oakland, california to learn about its rich history. learn more about oakland and other stops on our tour at c-span.org/citiestour. you are watching american history tv on c-span3. , award-winning documentary film maker rick burns on the relationship between film in history. he explains why historical films

are so powerful and compelling but limited in their portrayal of history. he spoke at the opening of the film forum at the national museum of american history in washington. this is about one hour. [applause] >> chris, thank you very much. it was chris who had the energy and foresight for this to happen and we are all appreciative of you and of the team that got this together. ric burns: when i watch movies i am learning about life and fun and sometimes sadness. and receiving instruction from the screen. we all use movies to understand ourselves. growing up in colorado, for me it was westerns. i was captivated by john ford. i do not think i was learning history, but i was hooked on a historic time. and that time for me was very real.

film transports us all to another time and place and leads us to learn and explore so much more. the unbelievable terror of landing on normandy's beaches in "saving private ryan" made me read more. the battles of glory brought us to the epicenter of our nations struggle over the meaning of freedom feels so present today. our visitors walk into this museum with preconceived ideas about history and so much comes from the visual and emotional life of the films they have seen. and we have to understand and reinforce this knowledge, or help them find the truth behind the historical myths we carry. but it is so clear that film is elemental to the ways that americans see american history. we are thrilled you have joined us for the opening day of our inaugural history film forum and

we are so pleased to be working with partners at the national endowment for humanities to explore history and film together through this four-day program of screenings and discussion. we at the museum are dedicated to an important mission, using our collection of national treasures to make our shared history come alive. history must be made appealing for millions of visitors who visit us physically and online. we bring a coherence to american history and knit together stories and experiences around fundamental american ideals and ideas, such as freedom, opportunity, and democracy. we hope our visitors leave with an eagerness to become more engaged in our shared american history, which is more essential now than ever. in many ways, what film makers

when they explore history on the screen whether it is a , blockbuster feature film set in the past like ron howard's "in the heart of the sea," which you will see tonight, or a documentary film like rick burns' "the pilgrim," or a television program, millions of viewers are drawn into stories of our past. that experience affects how we understand history in our world today and helps inform the future we are creating together. this wonderful theater was renovated with the support of warner bros. in 2011, to be a state of the art space to show nearly every kind of film. and in the years since it's reopening, we have screened some brilliant films. despite the immense popularity of history films and the seriousness in which some critics are now taking content and interpreting history, there is no dedicated place to explore

the value of film as a tool for learning history. that is exactly what our forum is here for. it can bring diverse audiences and experts to probe the state of narrative and documentary historic film. it is certainly fitting that we are partners with the national endowment of humanities, which is such an influential force with filmmakers. with the neh we are working to create what we hope will become a leading history film event, screening new narratives and documentary films that will be important for lively conversations and creating signature experiences well into the future. to tell you more about the our keynoteoduce speaker who will begin the forum, it is my honor to introduce the chairman of the national endowment of humanities, breau adams. he has a philosophy degree and

was former president of brucknell university. welcome. thank you for supporting us. [applause] mr. adams: good afternoon, everyone. i am thrilled to be here to join you all for the opening of this wonderful new series. what a great idea and a wonderful place to be sharing , these with all of you. we are working with the present thiso festival and this museum which is so close to the mission of neh. these four days promise to be a rich exploration of how film conveys history of the american people and how we see our nation and ourselves. this year, as most of you know, the neh is celebrating our 50th anniversary.

here's an interesting piece of data. since 1965, we have funded more than 800 documentary films, bringing the best of humanities, research, and stories to the american people. i think in that 800 films we are committed something like $136 million to documentary filmmaking. we have to be the biggest investor in documentary films of the united states. [applause] mr. adams: one of the most effective and entertaining ways to present history is through documentary films. that is why we are so committed to this medium. and invites films people to reconsider historical chestnuts like the story of the pilgrim. this afternoon it is a great honor to introduce my friend and colleague, ric burns, one of the most accomplished documentary film makers.

since its founding in 1989, his production company has garnered 13 national emmy nominations, five emmy awards, three dupont columbia journalism awards, to fromdy's in the price american historic this -- historians. his films bring to life stories through rich, dramatic storytelling. his films prompt us to consider the different perspectives that deepen our understanding of american history. neh is proud to support his films, including "coney island," which variety described as a monumental documentary series that raises the bar, "into the

deep," "death and the civil war." neh recently aired "debt of honor," a moving celebration of -- exploration of the history of disabled veterans. it is an extra ordinary piece of work. as you can tell from this list ric has explored a broad range of topics. and brought these helps to a broad public. tomorrow night, ric's newest work, "the pilgrims" will screen here. i can promise you, because i i have seen pieces of it, breaks new ground by complicating what is become the american -- american origin myth. from thanksgiving to plymouth rock, it presents a seminal if often misunderstood episode in history.

one familiar in its broad outlines but also entirely unfamiliar in its rich, historical detail. the story of the pilgrims is grounded in the deep, social and political religious political , currents. it is a very complicated and real story of men and women of the mayflower. the film premieres november 24 on pbs american experience on thanksgiving day. i want to knowledge other key players, from steeplechase, bonnie lafayette, ric's wife, and robin espinala and lee howell. additionally, the executive producer, jeff beiber, is here. he has been a longtime partner with us at neh and is led a number of national -- prominent

national history series many , supported by the endowment. i hope you'll join us for the screening of "the pilgrims" tomorrow at 7 p.m. followed by a question and answer session. for now, please join me in welcoming one of our nation's most acclaimed documentary film makers, ric burns. [applause] ric burns: thank you so much. i can't tell you how moved i am am pleased i am by your words. i also cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to be here for the opening of the history film forum. i can't believe it has not been done before. i know it is going to take off. i have to say retrospective history and film other than my two boys and my wife bonnie, and i know this will be crushing to

hear to my three dogs maggie, , rosie, and fiona, and my wife, but history and filmmaking is my -- are the things that matter the most immediate my life. they have given me the greatest joy and wonder in needing and challenge for more than 30 years now. so given all that to be here under the joint offices of the sicilian, and extra ordinary institution more than any other , institution in american life, the one that has soft to -- soft to preserve and interpret the artifacts of the human and natural world, and in so doing further the increase and diffusion of knowledge of the american people, including the knowledge of history. and the national endowment for the humanities. whichxtraordinary agency were 50 years has done more than any other organization in america to further the understanding and dissemination of the humanities and support the making of historical documentary films. i cancel you enemies to be here and for us to be able to launch our film tomorrow night on the

pilgrims. since working with can of the ivil war, all the three films had the opportunity and good fortune to work with any supported by the national endowment of the humanities. apart from the dollar figure it represents my calculation is , that roughly every dollar from the neh leverages four to five. is the early money and enemies of people and in some kind of work to make their project come alive. at least on paper. it's a crucial engine for documentary films since before ken started his first film and his career is inconceivable without it. thank you for that into the people from the neh it is such a , team partnership to the american experience. to my steeplechase clan and my college roommate, michael, susan, thank you all for being

here. i'm here to talk to you about history and filmmaking. if you go to the website for the history film forum, you will find a comment from alfred hitchcock, in which he asserts that film is the most powerful medium in human history. i agree with that entirely. as a historical documentary filmmaker some part of me must also believe that historical film, and real events and episodes of history, are the most powerful medium for conveying the meaning and power and drama of history. it is the most powerful medium for bringing to life the compelling way the true stories of the past. i want to talk about where that power comes from, about how and ,hy film in history films

history on film can be so powerful and compelling emotionally and intellectually. i want to talk you about the pitfalls and limitations of the medium of making history on film. about what historical films are best at doing and what they are perhaps less well-suited for. finally, i want to say a few words about the moral obligation which i take to be crucial, that historical films and historical topics and historical documentaries have to their audience. about some of the ways it can be defaulted on, and how at their best they reveal a deep and abiding kinship between the deepest forces and promises of history itself. and the forces that film can get access to. in the process, i will to you everything i know about historical documentary film making. before anybody gets worried, it's not going to take that long.

for that reason and more and by way of illustrating my remarks, i will show three clips from some of the films, all of them supported by the endowment for the arts. all of them on the american experience. a film on "coney island" and a film about the whaling industry. and equipment there is time from our film on the donner party in 1992. i hope there is a little time for discussion at the end. john gray has told me he has the hook and he is not afraid to use it. history and film must unfold in time. both are subject to the iron law of temporal sequence, one thing happens and then another. in order, not in reverse. having said that the process of the real-time unfolding of any rigidly linear in a way that history never is.

film renders simultaneity , multiple things happening at once impossible, whereas history , is multiple and multifarious, always many things happening at once. that is why one of the great dangers of history on film, a digital form itself imposes, is the danger of reduction and simplification. the rendering of things that are intrinsically complex. in a way that things in history never are. this is a huge problem. film better have something incredibly powerful of its sleeve to compensate for this huge limitation or it's in huge trouble. the good news is that it does but more of that later. film emerged from the white heat of the industrial revolution in ways that is fascinating to me. even before the first motion picture cameras were invented,

there were riveting precursors that go back to at least the civil war. that cauldron, the factory floor, the common historical point of origin from which history in america seems to emerge. it's not too much to say that virtually everything important about american history and culture and everything about film has roots 150 years ago in the war. film historians point out that long ago, well before the motion pictures regular sequence of rectilinear frames, the american landscape was already being framed in sequence in a rectilinear way by railroads and telegraph. we can look out the train window as it made its way west or the implacable march of telegraph poles across the landscape, dividing the world into regular framed pictures.

we saw the technology of film itself incubating in the womb. and taking shape across the landscape of post-civil war america. edwardhotographer muybridge would take this relationship between framing and motion a giant step forward in two decades after the civil war. intriguingly to the patronage of a rural -- railroad baron. in 1878, using tripwires and 12 separate still cameras, muybridge captured an astonishing sequence of photographs. the price resource pounding of the track, proving incontrovertibly for the first time that at one point, all four feet of a horse are off the ground. he immediately grasped if he printed the sequences of still images on a circular photographic plate and then rotated that plate in front of a powerful strong light source you can create a primitive illusion of movement.

he called it zoopraxiscope. rely onnious invention the physiological phenomenon known as persistence of vision. it had a huge impact on a whole generation of inventors. looking back now no one is surprised to see that within 10 years of the muybridge experiment, the motion picture camera was born. more or less at the same time in and in thomas edison's studio in west orange, new jersey. by the last decade of the 19th century, history in film and actuality and motion pictures had come face-to-face. for the last 120 years in parallel, dreamlike, mesmerizing and inter-penetrating ways, history and films were already intermingling.

if to underscore their shared paths are moaning with any actual in the real, the first motion pictures themselves forcibly called actualities. enough for the first motion pictures simply to stare and wonder at the real world in motion. but thomas edison and his cohorts understood, 70 years ahead of time is what andy warhol famously rediscovered in the 1960's. reality itself, looked at nakedly and deeply without any adornment, is mesmerizing. they simply gazed at the world and should reality in motion. trains moving, people passing on the street, steamships sailing. buildings being constructed. for a brief moment history and film and reality in the moving image and actual life and the actualities that captured it

were one and the same thing, completely fused together. at the turn of the 20th century, at the very moment of freud and dawn of psychoanalysis, a process and unconscious content were superimposed on each other, as if reality were dreaming or to ask themselves were becoming reality. filmn feel this fusion of in the process they engaged in 70 films from the time. these early films, which have a mysterious, eyes wide open, eyes wide shut double life have long since become extraordinary historical documents in themselves. equally powerful both for the luminous kinetic surface realities they document and the deep historical processes they attest to. which brings me to the first clip i want to show you this afternoon. a 4-5-minute of film my colleagues and i made 25 years ago on the history of coney

island. coney island not as we think of it in the mid-20th century but at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when just at the birth of film, coney island was itself bursting onto the american scene. it was the most modern place on earth and a fiery cauldron and incubator of the modern mass culture. mixed in commercial and democratic. the fact is we simply could not have made this or captured and conveyed the transit during historical process at work in coney island without a credible archive of edison actualities contained in the library of congress paper print collection. all told, 3000 short films from the first 15 years of film history. the scene you will see is from the climax of our film. when the powerful and transforming forces of modernity, forces that would

come to an extreme area climax. forces that would prove creative and destructive. and for the power of electricity is a perfect metaphor. can we roll the clip? >> at its most popular, it most perfectly reflected its culture. it showed people what they wanted to see, what they thought the country may come. i think part of that was the excitement of electricity. ♪ dreamland never became as popular as luna or steeplechase. but the cascade of lights created a skyline unlike anything else in the world. coney was more than three big amusement parks, it was a city. the newspapers called it the "city of fire."

>> at night, the city of fire rears itself skyward from the ocean. thousands of glowing sparks a glimmer in the darkness. threads of golden gossamer trembling in the air. weeding translucent patterns of fire. they hang motionless. they are in love with the beauty of their own reflection in the water. fabulous beyond conceiving, ineffably beautiful, this fiery scintillation. >> while sigmund freud was formulating the pleasure principle in theory across the magic, thompson dundee and , reynolds were perfecting it on

coney island, which became the realized unconscious of its age. much of what people found there scared them. but they came. >> everybody came to coney sooner or later. on a warm september night in 1909, sigmund freud himself could be found at coney island, contemplating dreamland. >> the brazen voice of the island came on the eardrums. like conscious fever. the leaping horses and flying cars are metamorphosized into of delerium.ons and through the doorways of endless concert halls, drinking one glances faces that

follow in haunt. like the unspeakable phantoms of a dream. ♪ >> thompson and dundee's private heard of elephants roamed through the park. one of their favorites, topsy, had even helped build it. but she had a bad temper. she killed three men and three -- in three years, one who fed her a lit cigarette. it was clear topsy had to go. when she shrugged off the

effects of carrots fortified with potassium cyanide, thompson and dundee announced she would be hanged. when the aspca protested, they came up with a new plan. the powerful electric of plant could do more than like the park. thomas edison's men set up two huge electrodes. dundee and some hitler's -- handlers led topsy to the platform. they offered a keeper $25 to help. he refused to take part in the murder of his six-ton charge. they finally got her on top, electrodes on the right forefoot and the left rear. they threw the switch. it took 10 seconds. there was no noise.

♪ ric burns: there is something in this scene that i've always been, horrific as it is, particularly pleased about. it has to do, i think, with the relationship of history in the -- and film. in the film immediately following this scene of topsy's electrocution in january, 1903,

which was captured on film by thomas edison's colleagues, we placed a scene from may 1911, when dreamland, the third and largest park, burned to the ground on the night before opening day when a fault ignited one of the worst fires in brooklyn's history. the unmistakable implication in our film is that dreamland burned down as retribution for the fact that thomas edison electrocuted topsy. interestingly to me, no one has ever objected to this historically inaccurate story at the core of the film. a conceit that underlies and drives and propels the entire narrative and structure of the film.

let me say in the interest of full disclosure, dreamland did not burn down as punishment for topsy's murder. an amusement park to not die for coney island's sin, but everyone grasped the poetic truth, because it speaks to a deeper truth we intuitively understand about the ambivalent and transforming forces at work in the culture of the time. forces in equal measure created and destructive, pleasurable and painful, for which the primordial force of fire and the distinctive modern embodiment of electricity seen to be perfect -- seemed to be perfect metaphors. in 1914, 3 years after the burning of dreamland, the world itself began to burn down. as it did, something began to happen in culture and in history and film. as audiences wanted something other, something more and perhaps something less, than just moving pictures showing moving realities, motion

pictures themselves began moving in two directions simultaneously. they became dramatic and overtly fictional. they began to take on overtly historical subjects. often one at the same time. in 1915, 20 years after the motion picture camera was invented, 50 years after the end of the civil war, "birth of a nation" was produced. and released to the public. it was the most famous, if not infamous historic feature film of all time. history in film had arrived, and looking back at the course of the last century, it is possible to see a few patterns begin to take stock. an enormous commercial success, "birth of a nation" sparked massive controversy from the start. thomas dixon, the author of the

klansmen and a classmate of woodrow wilson at john hopkins, arrange for a screening at the white house in 1915. it is like writing history with lightning, president wilson reported. "my only regret is that it is also terribly true." across the country, african-americans and the naacp and many white americans denounced the film's racist depiction of african-americans running amok in the -- during reconstruction. the historical value based on history lies not in any punitive light it sheds on the reality of post-civil war america, but in its power as a toxic historic artifact in and of itself. tragically symptomatic of his time. attesting to the deep and abiding racism at the heart of jim crow america. the movie was still a kind of

lightning. just not the kind of illuminated, but the kind that shocks and burns and kills. one way or another, it is true to say, the most powerful medium in human history was underway. having alluded to one of the instances and ways history can -- history and film can go wrong, i want to talk about what film can do right. what positive power film has when it comes to the treatment of history that can make up for its stark and obvious limitations. i am a historical documentary filmmaker. therefore i speak from that point of view. not a feature film maker but a , producer of nonfiction history films. i believe everything i'm going to tell you equally applies to both fiction and nonfiction films alike. the historical films made as hollywood features and

historical documentaries. here is the five minutes ride so you ever the annual the documentary filmmaking. the first and most important thing to know is that all filmmaking is a narrative art form. no matter how long or short they are, they are always stories. they flow, they unspool, they unfold, they do so from within. we know this from the physical form the film. it runs for the camera 24 or the video camera at 30 frames per second and which is meant to be played back at 24 or 30 frames per second, irreversibly. forget about the fact that technology allows us to slow down, stop, reverse or otherwise manipulate the experience. i can tell you no director ever wanted you to stop his or her film while you were watching.

remember in this context the directors are called the directors for a reason. it is an anagram for dictator. [laughter] ric burns: they want you to experience them as they have arranged them. since all movies are stories, the first and primary challenge of every film is to figure out what the story of the film is. the story is not the same thing as the subject matter. it is the experience of that subject matter unfolding in film time, in the hearts of the audience. and discovering each timeout, what the story is for your film, it is more difficult than it seems. for many reasons, but primarily because of this: films don't happen where they seem to be on the screen. they really happen inside the audience. the chain of events being manipulated is not on the

screen, but unfolding inside each and every member of the audience. unlike the sounds and images up on the screen, it is hard to see and hear exactly what is going on in the audience. that is why making films is harder than it seems sometimes. it is also why the only ability a director or film maker really has to have is to be a sounding board. that is, to be the first member of the audience for his or her film, even before a single frame has been shot. it follows that all successful film projects begin, before they are written or shot, with a powerful, visceral gut reaction to the raw material of the story on the part of the writer or director. i firmly believe that gut reaction is really the first version, the first draft the , first cut of the film. whenever it is about the subject that helplessly arouses and

sustains excitement or interest in a writer or director from the very beginning is what will remain at the radioactive core of the project from first to last. it is the same thing that will arouse and sustains excitement and interest on the part of the audience. this is the spark, the lightning at the core of the film. it is what is filtered to the heart and feelings that counts as well. i felt for a long time watching my brother in the editing room 35 years ago that the fact that films are used making the faculty are made using a faculty located somewhere between the middle of the breastbone and the bridge of the nose, not higher. the head, the cerebral cortex, is really useful only for remembering and keeping track of what aroused interest and what failed to do so.

another crucially important, equally self-evident feature of films is that films happen in the present. regardless of whether the subject matter is in the present or past, historical films and historical documentary films, like all films if they are successful need to create an , experience in real time in the present as the film unfolds. an experience so powerful that whether consciously or not, the audience willingly confuses their experience in the present with the sense of what it might be like to live through the experience in the past. in another way, a flowing river of light and shadow and words and sound and music now becomes the basis of a sense of what happened then. this willing fiction, this

cheerful collusion by which the audience conspires in its own duping is the basis of all historical documentary films. there is something else. because the events in the film are temporal, linear, irreversible, you cannot go sideways, you cannot go back when you watch a film, the information you receive visually and orally must be clear the first time it is seen and heard. it must be african civil and knelt instantly within the icon of the year, the mine in the heart. even if the information is of obscure or mysterious, it must be distinctly, intentionally of -- obscure and mysterious. if not, the audience is lost and leaves in mind and body. films, must from the start, arrest belief and interest in more in this is the most crucial than what happens on the screen. in the most immediate and

literal sense we must believe the world presented to us by a 16mm or 35mm frame of light extends in all directions beyond public here seeing that what we're seeing. in addition, from the first frame to the last, we need to believe and care about things happening behind what we see on the screen, before what we see on the screen, and after what we see on the screen. this more than what is up on the screen, films must always evoke something that moves in two directions at once, far out into the real world, past and present, beyond the confines of the film. at the same time, far inward into the subjective experience of the individual beings attending to the story. again, if the film does not arouse and sustain her interest and concern all sorts of things that aren't literally happening in front of us, we rapidly become bored and leave. arousing and sustaining such interest is what a story does.

that is why in a movie we are constantly saying i wonder what , will happen next? finally, or almost finally, film is a bastardized, fallen hybrid form. interestingly and here -- inpure and constantly longing to be something else. i felt for a very long time that if a film could die and go to heaven, it would come back as a piece of music. the purest, most abstract and transcended artform of all. ideally, all the elements in film, words, images, music, sound effects, are scored like the notes in a symphony, each with a relative value and duration, timbre, texture, and effect. it's like music works so powerfully. i think it follows from everything i have said and have been saying that film is not only a narrative art form, but

an ecstatic form as well. in the root sense of the word which comes from the greek, which means literally "outside the self." film must take you outside yourself. it must transport you willingly beyond where you were when you sat down. it must then return you to yourself changed. for all these reasons that film particularly capable of getting out or deploying to the things that any presentation in history must accomplish. it wants to engage in compelled and hold the attention of the audience. film, it turns out, singular and reductive as it is frame by frame, is extremely well-suited to joining two vastly different scales the epic and intimate. , it can provide evocative, concrete details of flesh and blood people who lived, where they came from, what the

character was, and access to the historical forces. and present a broad, powerfully illuminating synthesis of those forces. phil has the potential for providing access to both the mystery and power of individual human beings and the mystery and power of vast historical forces and processes. boundary and concrete details of the human beings who once lived to the vast forces that shaped and interconnected the seemingly disparate circumstances of those lives. what is striking to grasp is that different as they are on the surface, the personal and the historical, they bring us very close to the power of things felt, but not easily seen. to think that our -- are invisible, but strongly felt and

that affect his powerfully nonetheless. saving is closer to the unseen mysteries of human inferiority and to the unseat mistry a broad historical forces. to the dreamlike power of interior life and the dreamlike power of vast historical processes. that is the promise of history and the promise of film. the challenge of both, emerging of the intimate and impersonal, the dreamlike power of interior life and the dreamlike power of process. the only way i know how to do that is by telling a story. a form by which more than any other stitches the scene to the unseen, the invisible inner life of real people who have struggled and dream. the unseen but totally felt love the forces impinging on their lives. the process is at work, whether we see them or not in the events that unfold around us. if what film does is provides a view of the inner world.

it will not or should i be surprising that many of the top is separate by the most powerful points of departure, the kinds of narrative history that films treat best, are moments with the forces of history in the power of imagination collide in a spectacular and transformative way. given what history and film share in common, a powerful toehold in basis in reality, and how they divert, and history's intrinsic multiplicity, i think it is in enormously creative in honestly creative industry intention, of defining relationships. a relationship between fact and fiction, history and imagination, thought and feeling. between reality as it is on one hand and what we feel compelled to do about it. nothing in my view better exemplifies this crucial and defining relationship between fact and fiction, history and imagination at the core of all history of film than the first

film being shown here. ron howard's "in the heart of sea," the chronicle of the most harrowing episode in the history of the american whaling industry, the voyage of the whale ship essex. the real historical event it is based on can be thought of the most paradigmatic moment of history and film. the historicalr reality of the whaling industry, the reality of its most spectacular and harrowing episode the sinking of the essex , 3000 miles off the coast of chile, and the biographical experience of herman melville cruising the same waters. finally, melville's spectacular imaginative transformation of

that experience in moby dick, all of which converge in and emanate from the real-life story of the essex and its aftermath. by the 1920's, melville had been dead for 20 years. his reputation had long since some deeper than the doomed whale ship. then it revived in the 1920's. in 1926, a 100 minute silent film, "the sea beast," directed by millard webb, starring john barrymore was made. it was a huge commercial success. ahab oddly lives in this version. as a companion piece, part prequel and parts sequal to the incredible store you will see tonight, i want to show you a second clip of a film i colleagues and i worked on called, "into the deep." no story in the annals of the american history i am aware of goes further out or deeper in

than the ways they are trying to describe them the story of american whaling. the store near -- extraordinary story of the essex and herman melville. the film is both about american whaling and its most notorious catastrophe and what herman melville made of it. up inake 71841, -- takes 1841, 20 years after the essex went down, when herman melville went to see as a young man. can we roll the clip? ♪ >> in the waning days of december, 1840, a restless 24-year-old schoolteacher from upstate new york arrived in new bedford, looking for work on a whale ship. on december 25, he signed

onboard each whale ship and set sail for the south pacific. "my life began that day." ♪ >> herman melville was young man adrift. he had no profession and was with little formal education. he did what other young men did in the 19th century when they found themselves in the circumstances, went to sea. >> and he sailed cape horn and up into the pacific. at the marqueillesas, he jumped ship. he spent one month ashore enjoying -- and joined a second ship. on board her he was involved in a beaten the game was eventually incarcerated in a tahitian jail, he escaped from that and went to a third whale ship, an entire -- a nantucket whale ship the , charleston henry. hearing the story of his life,

you would not believe it had really happened. it sounds a made up life. but it is a real-life, very similar to others. >> he became friends and comrades with people from around the world, of great diversity, of color and temperament and language. he really believed in the dignity of the common man and discovered that on the whale ship. he discovered the capacity for heroism and self-sacrifice and solidarity with their friends. -- and theirty reliable moral instinct about good and evil. he believed in those principles of democratic equality. for three years he wanted the pacific, coming to know every aspect of the whaling industry in intimate detail. the cruelty and exploitation. the violence and the danger. the courage and the generosity.

the beauty and the wonder. >> there you stand, 100 feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep as if the masts were giant stilts. while beneath you between your legs swim the hugest monsters of the sea. there you stand, lost in the infinite furies of the sea, until at last, a spirit ebbs away, becomes diffused through time and space, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

herman melville. that his wife's -- white melville put so much of his reverie at the masthead. sailors emphasize, this is a place where you daydream and do appreciate the magnificence of the world. this is a place where men understand the depth or the expense of the world. >> one night in august 1841, for out on the pacific, 100 miles from where the essex had gone down 20 years earlier, he had a chance encounter the -- that would change the course of his life completely. >> on board, on passage to the pacific cruising grounds, we encountered another nantucket craft.

i'm a geek points of a fine right of 16 or thereabouts. a son of owen chase, the first mate of the essex and one of it's only survivors. i questioned him concerning his father's adventure. the next morning he had a complete copy of his father's extraordinary narrative. the reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea, so close to the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect on me. >> the tale of what happened to the men on the essex, adrift on the wife and unforgiving waters of the pacific, haunted him for the rest of his life. ric burns: you know, as a student of literature sometimes,

it's extraordinary that one of the great works of world literature that we can know with a certainty the exact moment the seed was planted, the moment that owen chase, first mate of the doomed essex's son, handed to herman melville his account. i want to say a couple more things. i've left it in such a fashion that nobody can ask any questions, which may be for the best. i want to reiterate what film cannot do. films, history films cannot be encyclopedic. they cannot be discursive inner -- or analytic or exhaustive. there are no footnotes. they cannot do more than one thing at a time. the obligation of using any film

for history, the inevitable moral responsibility of the filmic whether honored in preach or observance, is to get at a truth. and certainly not the whole truth. but to get a truth. the only 100% factual, nonproductive and yet so catastrophically riveting kind of history film i know is the kind of film where the bulb in the projected damages and stops the film, a real world event burns through the film. you have a disastrous sense of an apocalypse happening in front of you, a dream being melted from within. that is a perfectly valid historical documentary film in which the whole truth is conveyed and captured and can fear no criticism. except for that one you are left in a different world. when you traffic in film and history, fiction and nonfiction,

you were always borrowing the authority, the power and majesty and counting on the potency for its tail. you have a contract with the audience. you will take them as close to a truth that you can, no matter what the limitations are they get in your way. that truth will be the truth of something real in the outer world, something real in the hearts and minds and imagination of the audience. and whether you fictionalize it or not or re-created or not, he not the deciding feature. you can default on your moral obligation to transport your audience inward and outward is much like an danzig fidelity, mindnumbing detail as by exploiting the emotional vulnerability of any audience that is truly engaged in the film and by lying outright. films are not texts.

films are waking dreams. sometimes dreams can be in -- in the now and in rupturing. dreams can be little more than seductive illusions. it has to be a dream. it has the run the risk of being banal or seductive or beguiling in a way that is false. in order to try to "ecstatic outside of itself. -- to be genuinely ecstatic outside of itself. dream truth, storage truth, the most potent reality, is what history on film can give access to. this is something that is easy to get wrong or be manipulated in the wrong direction. hence "birth of a nation" or countless other more contemporary examples. whether a feature film or a documentary film, the power of film is so strong not because of its and encyclopedic quality, on the contrary but because it , narrows the gap to almost zero between the audience and the

hearts and minds of the reality beyond the screen. if the film works on that level and does not betray the confidence of the audience, it can provide something truly electrifying and important. thank you very much to the history film forum for inviting me here today. god bless this incredible idea. i say go little ship, go. i look forward to many more years of this. thank you all. [applause]

>> thank you all and i look forward to seeing you at more of our events throughout the weekend. thank you again, ric. and we will see you throughout the weekend. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. >> director steven spielberg played his film, "bridge of

spies," is based on the story of rudolf abel, arrested in new york city, convicted, and exchanged for u.s. biplane pilot. of american history tv, the brooklyn historical society host several experts on the trial. discuss how the story is a trade in the film. this is just under two hours. >> have to thank mark palermo for bringing this to us and the brooklyn historical society. [applause] >> we are about to hear five perspectives on the cold war trial of rudolf abel that riveted brooklyn, new york, the country, and i daresay the world and inspired the