This article originally appeared on TIME.com.
The new documentaryDefying the Nazis: The Sharps Warbears an unusual distinction for filmmaker Ken Burns.
Here, Burns talks to TIME about how people can change history and why the Sharps story resonates today.
What attracted you to this story?
What drew me is three things.
This is a story of sacrifice and its cost, and therefore it raises existential questions.
Its a phenomenal transformation.
The second thing is that this is about potentiality.
And then finally its about resonance.
We are in this refugee crisis right now, and it speaks to the present day.
So this is the story firing on all cylinders.
This is a small, tiny story.
Youve spent so much time with history.
What are your thoughts on that?
Can an individual change history?
I wasnt interviewing old people.
I was interviewing children.
The same is true for the team that did these interviews here.
When theyre scared, you remember that even more.
I remember that from my own childhood.
My mother was dying of cancer for 10 years and I could read it on their faces.
It imprinted on me.
I find childrens recollections unusually accurate with regards to hard times.
Cutting across the Dust Bowl film, everybody said the same thing.
After a while you realize nobodys making this stuff up.
These are kids who accurately received and understood what was going on.
Theres some mention in the film of the destruction of documents in Prague when the Nazis invaded.
How did that affect the research?
I mean, Artemis adopted this project when he was 14 years old.
This has been a lifelong project for him.
Hes hired private detectives to find these people.
That must be a big advantage of working with someone who has a personal relationship to the story.
It was a blessing.
But he also was too close to it in some respects.
What I could bring was how to restructure it, how to tell it.
I can see how that distance would help.
This is a film where the bulk of World War II is a montage.
Theres so much you have to choose to exclude.
I had to go through and say, look, you just jumped from 1941 to 1945.
I need to actually say, however voicelessly, something happens then.
How do you see film and VR working together?
What do you think VR can bring to stories about and from history?
The VR is a wonderful thing.
Eventually it will put me out of business but hopefully Ill be long gone.
