Executive Produced by Stanley Nelson
Directed and Produced by Marco Williams and Laurens Grant
Coming to Independent Lens on PBS

CREATING THE NEW WORLD is a groundbreaking series that examines how the largest forced migration in history constructed notions of race and identity, built new economies, and gave rise to global capitalism.

Produced by Firelight Films and Executive Produced by acclaimed filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) for national broadcast on PBS.

The series is written and produced by Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated Marco Williams (Two Towns of Jasper and Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, which Williams directed with Stanley Nelson). Williams will also direct episodes three and four of the series.

In four one-hour programs, each covering a defined historical period and featuring a specific voyage as its narrative spine, the series explores the demographic, economic, and moral transformations wrought by the slave trade, African participation and resistance to the trade, the business of the trade, and the experience of enslaved people at the heart of the trade. Leveraging the latest scholarship, forensic science, and recently unearthed archival material found across four continents, the series will challenge widespread popular misconceptions about the slave trade.

Directed by and produced by Marco Williams and Laurens Grant and Executive Produced by Stanley Nelson, CREATING THE NEW WORLD: THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE is a PBS Distribution release of a Firelight Films and ITVS production in association with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Major funding for CREATING THE NEW WORLD: THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE is provided by Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Principal funding for companion education and engagement activities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations and the Wyncote Foundation. Firelight Media is also grateful to Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice as its resources have been critical in properly researching this project.