or to a painting, or to a first person voice. Sometimes it ' s just a tabletop with a candle on it and a map and a set of spectacles, and it ' s George Washington ' s camp. We have his tent, and we filmed it at night, and we filmed it at day, and we filmed inside of it, and we filmed it with candles. You can just imagine. The only thing that ' s not there is him.
Stanmeyer: I understand that you attended Hampshire College in Amherst?
Burns: Indeed I did. You wouldn ' t be talking to me if I hadn ' t gone to Hampshire College. I don ' t recognize the person who went in and the person who came out. They just transformed me in every way possible. I was taught by still photographers, and so I ' ve always had a healthy respect and use of the still photograph. I’ ve added the cinematic dimension to it, but it ' s still rooted heavily in the power of an individual image to convey complex information without lots of explaining.
Stanmeyer: The American Revolution opened the door to advance civil liberties and human rights. Have we lost sight of that?
Burns: In some ways, we’ ve lost sight of it. But in other ways, we haven ' t. We ' re very much part of it. It ' s too difficult with a country as big and as complicated as ours to make a blanket statement. We don ' t teach enough history. People are not steeped in it. We ' ve said that it doesn ' t have value. Civics and humanities are being removed from places. All to our peril, we can feel the ways in which the connection to that Revolutionary spirit— the idea that we would be citizens and not subjects— has waned. At the same time, there ' s a ferocity of those who wish to keep it, who wish to understand
it, who wish to celebrate it. And I think everybody has a measure, whether they know it or not, of pride in the United States. As one of the historians says, you look at these third world countries that are rebelling and overthrowing. We forget that we were the original anti-colonials. We invented that. We started that. At that time, we were rebelling against the best form of government on Earth. The constitutional monarchy of Britain at the second half of the 18th century was the best form of government. We just happened to have an even better idea. n
For more information on The American Revolution, check out pbs. org. To get tickets to the screening and talkback event at the Palace Theatre in Albany on Wednesday, September 10, go to palacealbany. org.
DAYDREAMING IT’ S IN OUR NATURE
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Holiday July 2025 2023 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // 99