13th

13th (2016) is Ava DuVernay's documentary, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It starts from a single clause in the Thirteenth Amendment: slavery is abolished, except as punishment for a crime. DuVernay traces how those few words shaped the lives of Black Americans for the next century and a half.

From emancipation the film moves through segregation, Jim Crow, the war on drugs, and decades of "law and order" politics, arriving at a country that locks up a staggering share of its own people. Historian Angela Davis, attorney Bryan Stevenson, and Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow, lay out the argument. Their testimony runs against archival footage, campaign speeches, and statistics that are hard to wave away.

Released on Netflix, it was the first documentary ever chosen to open the New York Film Festival, and it later picked up an Emmy. DuVernay makes her case bluntly: prison here isn't a glitch in the system but the system continuing by other means. It's heavy going and worth it for anyone trying to understand where American mass incarceration came from. Stream 13th (2016) online on iFILM.