Prohibition

Prohibition is the PBS documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that shows the story of prohibition. For over 25 years, Ken Burns has been producing documentary films, while pioneering his style of using archival footage and photographs. Lynn Novick is an Emmy Award winning director and producer who has collaborated with Burns on films like The War and Baseball: The Tenth Inning. Now they are telling the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment, which barred the sale of alcohol in America. In place from 1920 to 1933, Prohibition, also referred to as the Noble Experiment, banned the sale, manufacturing, and transportation of alcohol, hoping to improve the lives of Americans. Originally planned to protect citizens, families, and society from the effects of abuse, Prohibition quickly had unplanned consequences. Soon regular citizens turned criminal, street gangs became national crime syndicates, speakeasies popped up all over the country and more. See the saga of the complicated Amendment which divided a nation, and the stories of rum runners, gangsters and flappers of the era in the three part PBS documentary series, Prohibition. MORE