Ken Burns says documenting the American Revolution made him 'optimistic' about the country's future

Documentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns has cemented his career on bringing history to life.

Documentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns has cemented his career on bringing history to life. In an interview with “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, the filmmaker challenged how the nation remembers its founding and the Revolutionary War.

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“I think we have sanitized the war. And I think it’s out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in ’76,” Burns told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.

Burns has been making documentaries for 50 years, but his 1990 project “The Civil War” put him on the map and earned him two Emmys, two Grammys and a Peabody Award. His newest series is a six-part documentary titled “The American Revolution,” a project he began working on in 2015.