Documentary filmmaker Steve James didn’t have far to travel to shoot his latest project, the Emmy-contending Starz docuseries America to Me.
“The location was three blocks from my house,” he tells Deadline. “I have never been closer to a subject.”
That location was Oak Park and River Forest High School [Oprf] west of Chicago, where the director spent the 2015-2016 school year “following stories of race and academics” at a place with an impressively diverse student body: majority white, but with a sizable black, Latino and multiracial population. But racially diverse didn’t necessarily equal racially harmonious, James found.
“The landscape of this high school, no space is race neutral,” observes assistant principal Chala Holland in Episode 1 of the 10-part series. “While this school has some diversity, it’s predictable who’s going into what space, and that’s a racial predictability.”
James and his camera teams captured informal segregation in the school lunchroom,...
“The location was three blocks from my house,” he tells Deadline. “I have never been closer to a subject.”
That location was Oak Park and River Forest High School [Oprf] west of Chicago, where the director spent the 2015-2016 school year “following stories of race and academics” at a place with an impressively diverse student body: majority white, but with a sizable black, Latino and multiracial population. But racially diverse didn’t necessarily equal racially harmonious, James found.
“The landscape of this high school, no space is race neutral,” observes assistant principal Chala Holland in Episode 1 of the 10-part series. “While this school has some diversity, it’s predictable who’s going into what space, and that’s a racial predictability.”
James and his camera teams captured informal segregation in the school lunchroom,...
- 5/24/2019
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
It's not that Paul Noble has seen it all in his 30-plus years as an English teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School so much as he's seen the same things over and over.
Noble, one of the educators featured in Steve James' documentary about the academic achievement gap between black and white students at the Chicago-area school, started at Oprf in 1987, which makes him one of the longest-tenured teachers in the building. (Two of the 12 students James and his segment directors followed throughout the 2015-16 academic year, Kendale McCoy and Terrence Moore, were ...
Noble, one of the educators featured in Steve James' documentary about the academic achievement gap between black and white students at the Chicago-area school, started at Oprf in 1987, which makes him one of the longest-tenured teachers in the building. (Two of the 12 students James and his segment directors followed throughout the 2015-16 academic year, Kendale McCoy and Terrence Moore, were ...
- 9/16/2018
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.