"I don't even know why I'm showing you this," he says as he calls up an image on his phone of him with Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, at the ceremony.

"It was just one of those things," the 42-year-old says. "I was like, 'Oh, I'm not going to do that'. And he was, 'Come on brother'. And then it was, 'We're doing this'. It was fun."

It doesn't take many minutes in the company of the Washington-raised, Brooklyn-based sports nut (his film was made for cable channel ESPN, where it screened in five parts) to realise he is a fairly serious-minded individual. "The way I go through the world, it's not like I'm this happy-go-lucky, fun-loving person," he says.

Even so, Oscar night - an occasion he describes as "over-stimulating" - was a bit special. "It was all these beautiful, famous, incredibly talented people dressed up and out for the night. In many ways you feel like you don't belong there, but for a night, you do. You've got a special pass."

Edelman is here for the Australian International Documentary Conference. On Sunday, he presents a free screening of his film in its entirety (in three sessions). The series also begins airing on free-to-air channel NITV on Sunday night.

In some ways, he says, it comes as a bit of a relief to have ducked out of LA so soon after the big night. He's got time to just walk the streets, clear his head, maybe see a movie (he likes the sound of Logan). The days since his win have been a blur. "Monday was just gone; I don't know what happened Monday. Tuesday was just a lot of talking, trying to process what had happened. Wednesday I had a meeting and caught up with some friends and then I flew here."

His film (or, if you prefer, TV series) goes well beyond the murder of Simpson's former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, which made the former American football star a household name around the world in 1994. It's a work about race and OJ's attempts to deny it; it's about ambition and celebrity and the distorting effects of fame; it's about the differing perceptions of justice in the white and black communities of Los Angeles.

Look closely enough, Edelman suggests, and it might even have something to say about the strange direction American politics has taken lately.

"In some ways there's a lot in it that helps explain the rise of a figure like Trump, in terms of the narcissism, the sociopathy, the media figure that Americans can respond to and glom on to by dint of the fact he's been in our culture and on our televisions for the past 30 years," he says. "I think there are parallels between him [Trump] and the character of OJ in some ways."

Above all, though, OJ: Made in America is an attempt to explain to white America why so many African-Americans supported "The Juice" throughout his trial despite the evidence that he had been a serial abuser of his wife, and why they cheered so wildly when he was acquitted.

To understand it fully, he say, you have to realise that "everything in that story had its fraught antecedents in the history of Los Angeles and the history of this country as a whole, going back to the original sin of slavery in our country".

Edelman - who is the child of an African-American mother and a Jewish father, and who describes himself as a "biracial black man" - was in college when the verdict came down. He hadn't followed the evidence all that closely, and he was never in the OJ-was-framed camp. Even so, as he watched it, alone, on TV, "I was rooting against the system, I was rooting against the history of injustice. I wasn't that invested in it, but I wasn't unhappy [with the verdict]. That's what I wanted."

It's remarkable that two excellent long-form TV series about the Simpson case were released last year: Edelman's five-part documentary and the 10-part The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, the star-studded dramatic retelling that won a bunch of Emmys last September.

Equally remarkable is that Edelman almost turned down the opportunity to make his series.

When ESPN asked him in early 2014 if he would be interested in making a five-hour film, he said yes, "because I was really interested in the formal challenge of making a longer work".

But then he asked what the series would be about.

"OJ," they said.

"Oh, I don't want to do that. What the f--- do I have to say about OJ? Enough already."

Eventually, though, he realised he was being offered the chance to tell "an iconic story about race in America", with a key event but no fixed starting or end point.

"I really believe this is the defining cultural narrative of the last 50 years," he says. "Once you get into who this person was, what he touches on, and how he explains ourselves and our country, you can very much make that case.

"It's a horrible tragedy," he adds, "but it's a perfect story".

The Australian International Documentary Conference is at ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne, March 5-8. OJ: Made in America screens on Sunday from 2pm, and is broadcast on NITV from this Sunday at 9.30pm.

Karl Quinn is on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin