Two Activists Projected Ava DuVernay’s ‘13th’ Onto the Baltimore Detention Center's Walls

Duane “Shorty” Davis and Brian Dolge held a screening of Ava DuVernay's '13th' with a twist to benefit released inmates at a Baltimore Prison.

Freedom projection
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Freedom projection

Freedom projection

In February, Netflix granted public screening access to Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated documentary 13th. Such access generally allows classrooms, community groups, book clubs, and educational groups to publicly view a work without having a Netflix subscription. Saturday, Duane “Shorty” Davis and Brian Dolge took things a step further and projected 13th on one of the walls of the Baltimore Detention Center.

Dinner and a Movie 13th Amendment https://t.co/wr3gKAZRDb

Part of 13th’s critical acclaim stems from the in-depth look the work takes at mass incarceration in America while drawing links between the prison-industrial complex, slavery, and the Jim Crow era. The choice to project a mass incarceration documentary on the wall of a prison was (rightfully) not perceived as a coincidence by those in charge.

“Halfway through the movie, the police show up and tell Shorty and Dolge they can’t project the movie,” noted Brandon Soderberg in a report for the Baltimore City Paper. “Shorty offers the cops food, they decline and a few in attendance including myself, begin recording the interaction. The police tell people they can’t record, which is not true.”

Saturday night’s events boiled down to projecting a movie about mass incarceration onto one of the very centers used to incarcerate people, while members of law enforcement misinterpreted the very laws they are paid to enforce. Davis and Dolge were supported by a 2016 ruling by the Eighth Judicial District Court of Clark County Nevada, which ruled light projections aren’t a form of trespassing.

Aside from making what could be interpreted as some form of artistic protest, there was a practical element to the screening, as Davis and Dolge occupy a spot near the detention center’s booking office to provide assistance to released inmates weekly. Davis called the added screening of 13th an “art project.”

The event got the attention of 13th director and co-writer DuVernay, who re-tweeted an image of the film being projected along with the anti-Trump hashtag #resist. But the increased attention may not necessarily translate into an encore performance.

Projecting the documentary "13th" onto the walls of the Baltimore Detention Center. To the guards' dismay, totally legal. pic.twitter.com/nEXEXSkMGE

“Shorty hopes to do this shit all summer all around town but probably not at the jail again,” Soderberg added. “The ‘symbolism’ of projecting it on the prison is nice and all, but he ‘doesn’t like asking black people to come to jail’ for an event—this one time here will do.”

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