13TH

Description

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1865, formally abolishing slavery in the United States. However, a clause in the amendment that permits involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime has proved a loophole through which discrimination could prevail. Ava DuVernay’s widely researched and potent film—the first documentary to open the New York Film Festival—draws a through-line from post-abolition strategies adopted by the power structure to criminalize African Americans to our current epidemic of mass incarceration. With a depth of interviews—with everyone from Angela Davis, Henry Louis Gates, Van Jones, and Cory Booker to Newt Gingrich—and compelling archival footage, DuVernay investigates tactics such as early rhetoric, the war on drugs, three-strikes laws, privatization of prisons, and the need for political candidates to appear tough on crime that have contributed to the number of African Americans under criminal supervision. Underscored with songs of protest, the film is a morally compelling and powerfully emotional corrective to false mythologies of Black criminality in America.

Trailer

//www.youtube.com/embed/V66F3WU2CKk

Film Details