Synopsis

A one-hour documentary about our first real moment of declaring independence 250 years ago, when New Yorkers toppled the statue of King George III at Bowling Green after a first public reading of the freshly inked document on July 9, 1776. What happened to the statue after that? The answer might surprise you. Made of lead to look like a Roman statue of Marcus Aurelius, it got melted down by a Connecticut girl into artillery balls to kill the enemy. Its decapitated head got smuggled back to England, probably hiding to this day in a colonist’s estate. In this film, we consider the rise and fall of empires, the toppling of statues, and the removal of monuments to Confederates and slave holders in the afterlife of George Floyd. We follow historian Abby Suckle on her trail to finally find the missing head of King George III, telling the story of how it all happened, along with reflections from Ivan Schwartz whose Studio EIS in Brooklyn has spent a half century sculpting statues of legends from American history in all its complexity: from Presidential libraries, to a re-creation of King George’s statue.

Director’s Note

This great Revolutionary War story inspired me to go film more monuments, from the ruins of ancient Rome to our nation’s capital arriving at 250 years of empire. Seeing statues come down from reform movements in the Middle East, the American South, and protests around George Floyd, all set the stage for this art film about art and so much more, raising questions more than answers while new public projects like a Triumphal Arch and Garden of Heroes break ground.

—H. Paul Moon