But news of The 13th came out of the blue for the public, as did the announcement that its world premiere would mark the first time a documentary has opened the New York Film Festival in its 54-year history.Īfter viewing an early cut of the film, I spoke with DuVernay by phone from Los Angeles to discuss her film, which is emerging in the lead-up to a racially charged election, at a national moment when the increasing circulation of real images of black death-from cell phones to police dashcam footage-forces us to reconsider the definition of documentary itself. Meanwhile, her adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s young-adult fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time is slated to begin shooting in November, making her the first female director of color to work with a budget of over $100 million.
BLACK DEATH 2010 MOVIE SUMMARY SERIES
An avid Twitter user with a large following, she has been extremely busy of late, working as producer-writer-director on the forthcoming TV series Queen Sugar. Through her company African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM), a community-based distribution collective founded in 2010, DuVernay has released black independent cinema that would otherwise not have seen the light of day, including her own early films I Will Follow (2010) and Middle of Nowhere (2012). She is an influential chronicler of the African-American experience who operates in both fiction and documentary (see her excellent 2010 film, My Mic Sounds Nice: The Truth About Women in Hip Hop, which shares a similarly crisp, clean aesthetic) and who works effectively with larger budgets, and at the grassroots level as well. The 13th, which feels like a thematic companion piece to her civil-rights drama Selma (2014),bolsters the sense of DuVernay as a figure in the American film landscape without obvious parallel-perhaps Spike Lee in his ’90s prime is the closest comparison.
Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) as a launchpad to explore how black people have been systematically criminalized in the eyes of the law and the public, with males in particular coded as rapists and bogeymen. DuVernay’s film uses some especially damning clips from D.W. In places, The 13th recalls the work of Marlon Riggs, the late documentarian whose propulsive, tightly argued films Ethnic Notions (1986) and Color Adjustment (1992) assess the real-life implications of anti-black media stereotypes. This patchwork of smart critical voices lends the film an absorbing, immersive quality. to the current exile of activist Assata Shakur, are at once riveting and infuriating. Political advocate Van Jones is especially engaging his live-wire observations on historical FBI chicanery, Nixon’s Southern strategy, and the systematic decimation of black leadership, from the assassinations of Fred Hampton and Dr. Underscoring DuVernay’s clout, The 13th features a vast range of insightful, high-profile talking heads, including Michelle Alexander-author of The New Jim Crow, about the prison-industrial complex, an evident guiding light for the film-and legendary activist Angela Davis. In well-researched and cogently structured segments illuminated by on-screen statistics, The 13th investigates, among other state-sponsored forms of social malaise, the old Southern practice of convict leasing (the provision of prisoner labor to private parties), the ruthless application of Jim Crow laws, and the deleterious effects of the racially coded “war on drugs.” It focuses particularly on how the nation has produced the world’s highest rate of incarceration-a shocking opening statistic informs us that America represents five percent of the world’s population, yet is home to nearly 25 percent of the world’s prisoners-and how a disproportionate majority of those imprisoned are African-American.ĭuVernay’s basic premise is that the 13th Amendment, while guaranteeing emancipation for slaves, subsequently served as a loophole for ensuring that vast swathes of America’s black population would be doomed to a lack of liberty.
The 13th Amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, ratified by the states on December 6, 1865Īva DuVernay’s new documentary The 13th is a disturbing, expansive chronicle of national shame, excavating with clinical precision the long history of racial inequality in the United States. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Playing Along: What a Feeling By Andrew Chan
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