13th: A Conversation with Oprah Winfrey & Ava DuVernay

This was written by Myla, one of our student interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

In the special 13^th: A Conversation with Oprah Winfrey & Ava DuVernay, Oprah sits down with Ava DuVernay, one of the most influential people in today’s film industry, to discuss her process in creating the Oscar-nominated film, 13^th. After watching and reviewing her documentary, the interview special was an essential watch. 

Winfrey and DuVernay have a conversation as old friends. Oprah inquires about what inspired DuVernay to create the masterpiece that is 13^th.  DuVernay points to her negative interactions with the police. She goes on to detail her childhood experiences with law enforcement. The filmmaker grew up in Compton in Los Angeles County, California. Compton is often considered the most dangerous city in California. She discusses having a heavy police presence in her neighborhood. For her, the police represented fear and danger. She recalls how police came into her backyard and tackled her father to the ground as he was watering their lawn. Law enforcement was going to arrest her innocent father after he was wrongly accused of being a suspect in a crime. Of course, DuVernay had many more stories, but she chose not to share them. Interestingly, she did not include any of her childhood experiences in the documentary. To maintain objectivity, she refrained from placing herself in the story.  Years later, she studied black liberation theory, policing, prison, and civil rights in college. She was an African American studies major at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

DuVernay guides Winfrey through her journey of creating the film. “Documentary filmmaking is a thinking process because the film wants to be what it wants to be. You can’t dictate what the story’s going to be. You can go in with an area of focus or some key points that you want to explore,” she states. DuVernay continues to explain that you have to follow the story. Her first area of focus was exploring the prison-industrial complex, which is the concept of prison being an industry and business. To understand the modern prison system, DuVernay had to look at the past. She puts the events of slavery, involuntary labor, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration together like puzzle pieces. This resulted in a new revelation for many viewers who have never thought about slavery being redesigned in the form of mass incarceration.

DuVernay’s plethora of commentators enhanced her storytelling. It was a two-year process to interview everyone in the film, one of the most prominent being political activist Angela Davis. She was able to include liberals and conservatives who brought both perspectives to the table. Surprisingly, about 40 percent of the interviewees were conservatives. DuVernay moves on to discuss how she was committed to limiting the movie to 100 minutes. She didn’t believe that people would want to tackle this topic every week.

With Winfrey, DuVernay gives her stance on prison reform. She advocates for abolishing prison instead of reforming prison. “Historically, reform has always led to further repression because reform is really people reshaping these mechanisms, these systems, to their own end,” DuVernay explains. She clarifies that the abolishment of prison does not mean freedom for everyone. Rather, the way that the system has worked in the past and now is broken. She advises looking at the prison system layer by layer, dismantling it, and reconstructing it.

Towards the end of the special, Winfrey expresses how many people have gained knowledge from the film. “Every single person I know who has seen 13^th comes away with a different level of consciousness about what’s going on with the mass incarceration system,” she states. As a person who has watched, analyzed and reviewed the film, I can say that it has made a significant impact on me. 13^th is essentially a cry for change. When systemic racism is not addressed, America cannot be transformed.  Since mass incarceration is not considered a priority in our country, the wrongly convicted continue to suffer. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”