"When They See Us" at Netflix: Racism Series in "Central Park Five"

On this 1989 spring night, Kevin Richardson is 14 years old. He is in an interrogation room in New York with a bleeding wound in his left eye and is familiar with police investigation methods. They scream at the miner, intimidate him, punch his fist on the table, whisper in his ear that he can leave if he confesses his crime.

That night, Kevin, completely frightened, made a false confession and said that he and four other boys raped and badaulted a woman in Central Park. His panicked story contradicts in many ways the traces on the scene, a chain of evidence can not be established.

Against all doubts but speaks of the color of Kevin and other suspects Antron, Yusef, Raymond and Korey. Four are black, one is Latin. Newspaper article yellow press insult them like animals. Real estate mogul Donald Trump, then 43, is claiming the death penalty for her in a one-page advertisement.

It's a very emotional true story told by director Ava DuVernay in her new four-piece film "When They See Us" presented for the first time at Netflix. And it's a story that goes beyond itself with just about every image that illustrates a structural racism that still exists in the United States.

This one, DuVernay says, has happened to us a thousand times, millions of times. We came to this country as slaves and we are still not free.

DuVernay has become the most famous political filmmaker in the United States in recent years. She learned the craft and made the breakthrough with her third film, the drama "Selma" on Martin Luther King Jr. For this, DuVernay was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture in 2015, the only one person of color this year.

Although "When They See Us" is a television and not a movie, DuVernay paints on an even bigger screen. She presents the history of the "Central Park Five" in four episodes almost filled with feature films and illuminates the events from different angles and over many years.

The night in Central Park and its forced declarations have bitter consequences for boys. The investigation, punctuated with prejudices, errors and deliberate manipulation, is followed by an unfair trial at the end of which Kevin and the others are innocently imprisoned for many years. After his release, the harbadment continues, they are now called rapists and can only work in temporary jobs.

Korey Wise is 16 years old at the time and is sentenced to adult criminal law. During his stay in prison, marked by beatings and solitary confinement, DuVernay spends the entirety of the last episode. Here she shows the degrading conditions of detention, the Moloch of the so-called penitentiary-industrial complex, who made ridiculous sums in the United States with millions of inmates and who also circled the Netflix series "Orange Is The New Black".

We must "When they see us" as a dramatic development of DuVernays also nominated for the Oscar and also broadcast by the Netflix documentation "The 13th" understand. The filmmaker outrageously underscores the link between slavery and the high rates of incarceration of blacks made possible by the 13th article on the US Constitution. He actually abolished slavery, but with a decisive limitation:

"WAny slavery or servitude, except as a punishment for a crime of which the person concerned has been found guilty in accordance with due process, may exist in the United States or in any area of ​​its jurisdiction. "

In the United States, slavery and lynching were replaced by a law that left a loophole for the oppression and exploitation of the black population. DuVernay shows since the Nixon drug war, which hit them first and foremost, the mbad imprisonment under Reagan and its dramatic expansion under Clinton, and shows how a powerful industry has emerged since the 1970s.

From there, "When they see us" develops its eminent explosive political power. In addition, all four blades target the current US president. DuVernay does not hide that she regards Donald Trump as a racist who, even before the Central Park Five trial, had demanded some veil to lynch the suspects.

Trump's appeal for the death penalty, which he has not revised until today, finds room in "When They See Us", and the DuVernay's first trailer was published with reference to its advertising exactly 30 years later:

You can accuse DuVernay of having hit strands in a gradual manner, overloading the story with the use of slow motion images and disturbing editing footage. But the emotions that break in "When they see us" are immediate and real. They feed on over 400 years of oppression and terror.

Available on Netflix.