At 9:15 a.m., I looked out my hotel window and saw a line was already stretching down the block for the 10:30 a.m. screening of Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary 13th. Now that’s not something you see every day. DuVernay is busy in pre-production for her upcoming series on the Central Park Five, so she was only able to fly in for the QA and basically had to be rushed off the stage after only one question from the audience to get her flight back. So okay what this meant was: the woman got up at 3, 4 in the morning to be there. This moves me so much. At one point during the QA, she stumbled over the words “Champaign-Urbana” and then stopped and said, “I don’t know where I am, y’all.”
I was unaware of just how far back Ava’s connection to Roger went. I knew she had a relationship with him in her years as a publicist, and then when she started making films, he always reviewed them. This is what creating connections and relationships is all about. But her connection to Roger went back to when she was a child, and she and her aunt would go stand outside the Shrine Auditorium during the Oscar rehearsals to watch the stars come in. And Roger came right over to her to speak to her. (Roger tells the story here. And there’s a picture!)
So although 13th has been celebrated, and rightly so, and although Ava is “having it all” right now … coming to THIS festival, in Roger’s home town, had great meaning since he was so significant in her life. (It’s a theme. Artist after artist who comes to the festival says the same thing!)
My friend Mitchell, who came to the festival with me (we had an absolute blast), has been writing Facebook posts all along and I thought I’d share some of his thoughts and observations. It was so much fun for us to share notes, to discuss, to debate. Here’s Mitchell on 13th:
it started at 10:30am in a packed house to watch the much hailed and ESSENTIAL documentary “13th”…it is required viewing if we are to progress as an alleged “free” country. Ava DuVernay entered to discuss the film to a long and vocal standing ovation. Her education and expertise as a historian made her uniquely prepared to make this film. I was blown away by her ability to discuss the film with so much knowledge and anger and humor and generosity. She spoke of her deep love and gratitude for Roger Ebert, and her relationship to her editor, and her relationship with Common. She should teach classes on public speaking!!! She told us that she deliberately avoided having any of her “talking heads” tell us, the audience, what we “should” do. She firmly but gently suggested that it was OUR job, that the people in the film are already doing the work…she asked, “What are you going to do?” Powerful and charming and funny and full of love for Roger and the festival. Mind blown.
100% cosign.
13th literally left me out of breath the first time I saw it. The documentary is urgent. Mass incarceration is a disgrace. So many “message” documentaries are basically thrown together. Not this one. It’s airtight. It builds its case, brick by brick, it shows you where to look, it helps you piece things together, it is a SERIOUS historical document and for sure should be taught in schools. If you emerge from it unchanged, if you watch it with your arms crossed refusing to consider the connections made in the film … if you take it defensively, then you certainly won’t mind if the rest of us continue on without you. No more time for that.