Yesterday, November 13, 2016, Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey hosted a Facebook Live conversation during which they spoke mostly about DuVernay’s acclaimed documentary “13th”, which is now streaming on Netflix after opening the 54th New York Film Festival last month – the first-ever nonfiction work to open the festival. It also saw a limited theatrical run, qualifying it for a potential Oscar nomination.




And thankfully that entire conversation (about 40 minutes long) – which also incorporated the recent USA presidential election as you’d expect given the film’s subject matter – has been made available to watch on demand, for those who weren’t able to see it live yesterday. So watch it all at the bottom of this post.

Evoking Sam Pollard’s documentary “Slavery By Another Name” and Angela Davis’ “The Prison Industrial Complex,” DuVernay’s “The 13th” chronicles the history of racial inequality in the United States, examining how the country has produced the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with the majority of those imprisoned being African American.

The documentary relies on a mixture of archival footage and testimonies from leading voices, including Michelle Alexander, Bryan Stevenson, Van Jones, Newt Gingrich, the aforementioned Angela Davis, Senator Cory Booker, Grover Norquist, Khalil Muhammad, Craig DeRoche, Shaka Senghor, Malkia Cyril, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and other activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, as it traces a pattern of fear and division that has consistently driven mass criminalization.

“13th” is available to stream on Netflix right now.

Below, watch the conversation between DuVernay and Winfrey, in front of a live audience.