©) PBS HOME VIDEO’ oS pC) ty eS THEWEST, PM Ro Es ay vas relays 5 it explores the day-to-day reality of disappointed gold rushers, _ stubborn cattle drivers, and displaced American Indians." —Caryn James, THE NEW YORK TIMESKEN BU REINS PRESENTS THE WEST A FILM BY STEPHEN IVES —— DISC ONE EPISODE one THE PEOPLE From the beginning of time, the West has been a land of myth, The original Native American inhabitants linked their creation stories to the majestic mountains, searing deserts and silent forests. To Europeans such as Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado, the ‘West was a “wilderness’ to be conquered ~ filled with boundless treasure, souls to | save or defeat, and new horizons to explore DVD SPECIAL FEATURES THE MAKING OF THE WEST * TRIVIA ON THE WEST © INTERACTIVE MAPS Special Features Not Rated Sa DISC Two EpIsopE Two EMPIRE UPON THE TRAILS | | In the early 1800s, no one knew who would control the seemingly infinite spaces of the West. But hopeful Americans began moving there nevertheless, and the individual trails they followed eventually merged into the single path of "Manifest Destiny.” Episopr Taree THE SPECK OF THE FUTURE In 1848, a sawmill worker named James Marshall reached down into the streambed of the American River in California - and came up with the future of the West in the palm of his hand. He had discovered gold. During the next year alone, in one of the most astounding human stampedes in history, more than 50,000 fortune-seekers would swarm into the Sierra Nevada mountains in a headlong scramble for riches.B DISC THREE gPIsope Four DEATH RUNS RIOT The West has always symbolized hope and new beginnings. But in the 1850s, ay more American pioneers poured west, they ‘brought with ‘them the nation’s oldest, most arks that would ignite EpisopE rive THE GRANDEST ENTERPRISE UNDER GOD ‘After the Civil War reunited the North and the South, Americans set out with a new energy and optimism to finally unite the country, East and West. They embarked on one of the greatest technological achievements of the age, to conquer the forbidding mountains, harsh deserts and awesome distances by building the first transcontinental railroad. a DISC FOUR upisopE six FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER By the 1870s, there were only a few pockets of resistance against the United States push to conquer the West. On the Great Plains, Sitting Bull followed his mystical visions and urged his Lakota people to fight rather than surrender their sacred Black Hills and traditional way of life. On a hot summer day at the Little Bighorn, they would defeat another warrior equally sure of his own invincibility ~ George Armstrong Custer. But Custers “Last Stand” would also become, in effect, the last stand of the Sioux as a free people. EPISODE sevEN THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE By the late 1870s, the American conquest of the West was nearly complete, In one decade, with Native Americans effectively confined to reservations, some four-and-a-half million new settlers would arrive to stake their claim to the future, Homesteaders proudly built their homes of prairie sod, then battled drought and hard times to keep them. — DISC FIVE EPISODE EIGHT GHOST DANCE By the late 1880s, Americans were astounded by the changes they had brought to the West. Mining towns such as Butte, Montana were now full-fledged industrial cities, magnets of opportunity to workers from around the world, but also places where the landscape itself was under assault EPisopy wins ONE SKY ABOVE US ‘As the 20th century neared, Americans celebrated with the World Columbian Exposition, where they were told that the frontier had closed — symbolized by one state proudly displaying an entire herd of buffalo... stuffed, But in the real West, for every frontier story that ended, another one began. ~J A MESSAGE FROM KEN BURNS & STEPHEN IVES > NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE WEST Ina conversation with us several years ago, the Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday remarked that the American Wests a place that has to be seen to be believed, and it may have tobe believed in order to be seen For five years we traveled that landscape, photographed its vistas, talked 10 its people sought out its history all as part of our production of THE WEST, Now — 100,000 air-miles and 72 filmed interviews and 74 visits to. archives and collections and. ‘more than 250 hours of film later — we have begun to understand at least something of what Momaday meant In the West, everything seems somehow larger, grander than life, and we now can see why so many different peoples have come to consider their own innermost lives inextricably linked with it Over the centuries, the West has been the repository of the dreams of an astonishing varity of people — and it has been on the long, dusty soads of the West that these dreams have crisscrossed and collided, transforming all who traveled along them, rewarding some while disappointing others. The story of the West was once told as an unbroken series of triumphs — the victory of “civilization” over “barbarism, relentlessly inspirational epic in which greed and cructy were often lossed over as enterprise and courage. Later, that epic would be tumed upside down by some, so that the stony ofthe West became another — equally misleading — morality tale, one in which the crimes of conquest and dispossssion were allowed to overshadow everything else that ever happened beyond the Msssippi. The truth about the West is far more complicated, and much more compelling America without the West is unthinkable now. Yet there was nothing inevitable about our taking it. Others had prior claim to its vasness, afterall, and we could quite easily have remained forever huddled east of the Mississippi. [n resolving to move west and become a continental nation we would exact a fearful price from those already living on the land. But we also became a different people, and itis no accident that that turbulent history — and the myths that have grown up around it — have made the West the most potent symbol ofthe nation as a whole, overseas as wel as in our own hearts ‘Of course, no film series can ever encompass the whole story ofthe West. There are as many valid approaches to telling it as there are able historians willing to try. We believe that history s really biography, and have chosen to focus onthe experiences of individual men and women, many of whom tell their own stories in their own words, through diaries and letters and autobiographical accounts Our cast is deliberately diverse, including some celebrated figures and some who will be new to most viewers. None plays the stereotyped part that one or another of the Wests contradictory myths dictates. All were selected because they seemed to us both to illuminate the times through which they lived, and to tell us something important about the West, a5 well ‘Our subjects were chosen, too, to demonstrate that in the often stirring story of the West, a human price was paid for every gain. The stories we've tried to tell at least suggest, we hope, the outlines of a more inclusive story of the West than is conventionally told; a story that is more frank about our failures and more clear-eyed about the cost of even our greatest successes than the old one but also a story in which each of us can finda place and all can take pardonable pride The story ofthe American West, we believe, is at once the story ofa nique part of the country anda metaphor fr the country asa whole. With al its heroism and inequity, exploitation and advent, sober realities and bright myths its the story of all of us, no matter where on the continent we happen to live, no matter how recently our ancestors arrived on its shores.KEN BURNS PRESENTS THE WEST A FILM HY STEPHEN EVES a PRESENTED BY KEN BURNS AND DIRECTED BY STEPHEN IVES, THIS 12-HOUR FILM CHRONICLES ‘THE EPIC SAGA OF AMERICA'S MOST VAST AND ‘TURBULENT REGION, BEGINNING BEFORE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT AND CONTINUING INTO ‘THE 20™ CENTURY. THE WEST COMES TO LIFE IN THIS PENETRATING HISTORY THAT OVERTURNS OLD STEREOTYPES, DISCOVERS NEW PERSONALITIES, AND EXPLORES THE ‘TRIUMPHS AND TRAGEDIES THAT MAKE THE WEST THE SOURCE OF SOME OF THE MOST COMPELLING ‘STORIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY. NARRATED BY PETER COYOTE DISC ONE EPISODE ONE THE PEOPLE DVD SPECIAL FEATURES Isc TWO EPISODES TWO AND THREE EMPIRE UPON THE TRAILS ‘THE SPECK OF THE FUTURE a DISC THREE EPISODES FOUR AND FIVE DEATH RUNS RIOT ‘THE GRANDEST ENTERPRISE UNDER GOD — Isc FOUR EPISODES SIX AND SEVEN FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER THE GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE a pise FIVE EPISODES HIGHT AND NINE GHOST DANCE ONE SKY ABOVE US KEN BURNS raesexns THE WEST 4 rum sy STEPHEN IVES ‘conve rmovucan KEN BURNS paopocs STEPHEN IVES, JODY ABRAMSON aN MICHAEL KANTOR ‘wuss GEOFFREY C, WARD ax DAYTON DUNCAN surmuvsano romos PAUL BARNES ‘mons RICHARD HANKIN, MICHAEL LEVINE so ADAM ZUCKER wnac MATHIAS GOHL xarnaton PETER COYOTE bee 1/1996 / COLOR/B&W / APPROX. 12 HOURS / US NOT RATED / CAN PG/ Ea / NTSC © 19% The West Film Project, Inc. / Greater Washington Educational Telecommunictions Assocation, Inc. All Rights ‘Reserved. PBS ard the PBS Home Video logo are registered trade and sence marks ofthe Pubic Broadcasting Service, ©2004 Artwork PBS, All Rights Reserved. Distributed by Paramount Home Entertainment, 5555 Melrose Avene, Holwod, Calon 90038. ices forsale only in US and Cana. “Dayan the FIC sybol are rade ‘marks of Dolby Laboratories Lcesing Corporation. WESTEOO Fall screen version presented in a format preserving the aspect ratio of is orginal television exibition. ‘Thank you! Your purchase supports quality PBS programming. PBS ] BvD &P> [hoa] [acre] (~ *) excusk Dy Sorodsieeo [JC] [errwrnbacrg