The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary 13TH refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “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.” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay with bracing lucidity. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis. Now Streaming on Netflix.
The documentary trailing. The full documentary is streamed on NetFlix.
Ava DuVernay discusses the making of her new documentary 13TH at a press conference during the 54th New York Film Festival.
Some folks have cherry picked some of the documentary without proper annotation, but still it made the rounds on Twitter and the Internet.
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