NAN-ELS-5
Film
U.S., Oct.4, 2016 (NAN/Reuters) Slavery was officially abolished in the United States 150 years ago, but documentary “13th’’ argues that it was still alive in the form of mass incarceration that disproportionately affects black people.
Ms Ava DuVernay, the director used TV footage, music, and interviews with academics, politicians and former prisoners to portray African-Americans as remaining enslaved, dating back to lynching, the battle for civil rights.
Similarly, imprisonments for drug offenses stop and frisk laws and the current spate of police killings of unarmed black civilians.
The U.S. prison population rose from 357,000 in 1970 to 2.3 million in 2014, the documentary noted.
While black men accounted for some 6.6 percent of the U.S. population, they currently make up 40.2 percent of the prison population.
DuVernay, best known for directing the 2014 civil rights feature film “Selma,’’ grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Compton, the birthplace of West Coast rap music.
“The community I grew up in; we don’t think of safety when we see the police
“So it’s always been on my mind, and as I was an African-American studies major at UCLA, I was able to put that experience into a historical and cultural context.
“It really solidified my deep, deep interest in the space and this issue. I always knew I would make a film about it.
“The documentary owes its title to the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which ended slavery in 1865,’’ she said.
It finishes with videos of the deaths at police hands of black men Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Philando Castile and others over the past three years that have given rise to the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
“The film deconstructs the 13th amendment, breaks down all of the repercussions, the echoes of that amendment throughout history to the present day.’’
The documentary received a standing ovation at the New York Film Festival last week and has a rare 100 percent positive rating on review aggregator Rottentomatoes.com.
It made its debut on streaming platform Netflix on Friday, and DuVernay hopes it will serve as a call to action.
“You now can’t say, ‘gosh, I didn’t know that, that’s horrible;’ now you know; so what do you do about it? Do you ask your politician about it, do you push for answers?’’ (NAN/Reuters)
EEE
===
Edited by Ese E. Ekama