Ava DuVernay’s documentary The 13th was met with applause and a standing ovation for the filmmaker on the opening day of the New York Film Festival, a fest that will also bring us our first reactions to Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. DuVernay’s film could be headed for an Oscar nomination in the documentary category, which would make DuVernay the first African American female to be nominated for director for Documentary Feature.
The 13th chronicles the years after the Civil War when generations of young black men were turned into a criminal class: their rights were stripped away and they were arrested for ridiculous laws put in place just to put them in jail. This was how the Jim Crow South attempted to hold on to their dominance. This is an ugly part of American history not known by many of us and one that continues to be fought every day. The rise of Donald Trump and his basket of deplorables is really the death rattle of Southern white supremacy.
The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman says about the film:
“Prisons are the new plantations!” may seem like sloganeering from a far-left protestor, but DuVernay’s effective film draws a strong, straight line from the abolition of slavery to today’s mass incarceration epidemic, explaining its root cause: money. Cheap prison labour is knotted up in the US economy in many unexpected ways, and the system is designed to get black men into jails early and often.
There are many threads of history that get us to where we are today. There are many documentaries that detail each one of these strands. The 13th puts all of the threads together into one place and will serve as a valuable resource of a part of our history we absolutely cannot ignore.
In terms of the documentary race, it will be interesting if it turns out that The 13th goes up against O.J.: Made in America. In many ways, these two films are about similar things. O.J. Simpson’s rise to fame is juxtaposed against the history and battlegrounds depicted in The 13th. But one will not be able to escape the irony of one documentary frontrunner about a black man who committed murder vs. a documentary about so many black men who were turned into criminals by insurmountable white supremacy.
The 13th will debut on Netflix and open in a limited theatrical run on October 7.
