Film Reflection
The documentary Ava DuVernay’s 13th was meant to highlight the stereotypes on the black and brown community and the conflicts relating to the prison system.
The three main filmmaking techniques I had noticed were Archival Footage & Media Clips, Editing & Juxtaposition, and Structure. The first thing I noticed when it comes to Archival Footage is how they portray it to the audience. I honestly feels like it almost mixes in with Editing and juxtaposition but different in some ways. History is brought to life by showing clips, images and even audios from before. While history is not that far from where we are now, one can still tell how different things were then but similar. They show clips of past presidents and their interviews, speeches, and even pictures of how black men looked with their jumpsuits, along with the infamous image of Peter (Gordon), the enslaved man with many scars from previous lashes he had to endure.
As for Editing & Juxtaposition, I feel like the editing in this documentary was amazingly done. It does so in a way that it makes it engaging and entertaining rather than just informational. Like how they always play some type of music relating to the previous chapter, as well as a lyric video with pictures to depict the words of the song. Or how they always highlight the word Criminal, as well as overlaying historical and present images on top of older speeches or even overlaying current speeches with older ones to just shove down our throats that history has not changed much, and we are still at square one.
And lastly for Structure, I feel as if the documentary went in chorological order. They did add a few jumps here and there and overlapped the history with the present, but overall, from what I saw it seemed like they had a decently linear path of history to present, with the history and present also mixing and creating this thematic like editing.
My Personal Response
What I learned was that the prison system is much worse than I thought. I already knew it was bad for many reasons other than racism, like how they treat the inmates, the false accusations, and the way it takes away all your rights once you are in. But I never knew it dehumanized someone so bad or was THIS racist along with being so populated. It angered me to know how racist the prison system was, along with the clips of police brutality against colored people. The film shaped my understanding by opening my eyes to the prison system, slaving them out and becoming an infinite slavery market since even once the inmates are out, they cannot live life. The film seemed objective but also had a clear point of view on their bias.
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