Well, beginning on Sunday, on PBS, a six-part 12-hour series on the American Revolution.

It's the latest from filmmaker Ken Burns, examining the earliest days of our nation's democratic experiment, and it comes at a time of deep divisions in our country.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has a look for our series Art in Action,

exploring the intersection of art and democracy and part of our Canvas coverage.

A shot rings out. No one knows where the shot came from.

That leads to promiscuous shooting.

April 19, 1775, the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

Afterwards, nothing would be the same, from then to our own time.

The American Revolution says Ken Burns is as important as any film he's made, precisely

because it is the founding moment, the origin story of a nation still wrestling with itself

and the very idea of democracy.

We've tended to make the revolution kind of sanitized and about men in Philadelphia

thinking great thoughts, which is really important.

But this is a bloody revolution.

It's a bloody civil war in which Americans

are killing other Americans because they don't agree with this.

And it's also a global war that's superimposed

on top of all of it.

And I think understanding the origin story

and understanding what the intention was of the

creation of the United States as it morphed and as it changed as it went along

helps us today understand not only where we are but where we could be going.

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