Screening & Live Event
America to Me (Episodes 1-5)

Part of Curators' Choice 2018
Saturday, December 29, 2018, 1:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Bartos Screening Room

With series creator Steve James and co-director Bing Liu in person

Dir. Steve James, Bing Liu, Rebecca Parrish, Kevin Shaw. Approximately 600 mins. Digital projection. An instant classic of long-form documentary that’s also one of the year’s most urgent and revelatory films, America to Me sees two-time Academy Award-nominee Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail) examine racial, economic and class issues in contemporary American education. Poignant and funny, epic and intimate, America to Me is a ten-part unscripted series captured over the course of an academic year at Chicagoland's elite Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF), where diversity, opportunity and fairness are championed, but not always easy to implement or achieve. Throughout, students, families, faculty and administration tell stories of the pressures and challenges teens face today in their own words, while James and three other filmmakers (including Minding the Gap’s Bing Liu) witness events as they transpire in the classroom, on the ballfield, at home, and everywhere in-between. Courtesy of Starz.

“America to Me…works as well as it does because it puts its characters first, and lets its lessons follow organically. It’s an invaluable look at where inequity begins, as well as the difficulty of getting to the place where it ends.”—James Poniewozik, The New York Times (Critic’s Pick)

Ticketholders for the December 29 program can present their ticket stub for admission to the December 30 program.

Free with Museum admission: $15 ($11 seniors and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / free for children under 3 and Museum members at the Film Lover and Kids Premium levels and above). Order advance admission (including reservation for this screening) online. (Members may contact members@movingimage.us with questions regarding online reservations.)

Ticket purchase includes same-day admission to the Museum (see gallery hours). View the Museum’s ticketing policy here. For more information on membership and to join online, visit our membership page.