MISTER ROGERS – COMING TO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD for a Free Advanced Screening

A new Focus Features documentary film, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the story of TV personality, Mister Rogers, will be released in theaters nationwide on June 8^th, but the local Windrider Bay Area audience has the distinct privilege of seeing this film at a FREE one-time private screening on May 23^rd.

For over thirty years (1968-2001), Fred Rogers, an unassuming puppeteer, writer, minister, and producer was beamed daily into homes across America. At a time when the country was deeply divided over political and cultural issues, this soft-spoken, cardigan-wearing television host, spoke directly to young children about some of life’s weightiest and most important issues, and demonstrated how television could be used as a positive force in our society.

In Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (Twenty Feet from Stardom) looks back on the legacy of Fred Rogers. He was at the forefront of a movement devoted to meeting the specific needs of children and was considered a radical back then for saying, “I like you just the way you are.”  Animated sequences are blended with archival footage of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and interviews with Fred Rogers’s family, friends, and colleagues. Neville’s beautiful and engaging tribute will melt the hearts of a jaded, cynical, and sophisticated audience of all ages with Rogers’ timely and surprisingly relevant message of kindness, love and respect.

A Word from Director Morgan Neville
Fred Rogers is an iconic figure. He is one of the very few people who occupy a time in most people’s lives that exists before they were formed as adults, before they were liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican—before they were anything. For most of us, when we met Fred, we were just little kids, watching him on TV. And, he took that opportunity to talk to us about the first principles of how we should behave and how we should treat each other. Simple but deep ideas that predate all of the cultural baggage that we acquire. I wanted to make a film that would take people back to the space they were in when they were a child, to those fundamental ideas that unify us, in spite of our differences as adults.

Morgan Neville is an Academy Award-winning, Grammy-winning, Emmy-winning filmmaker who concentrates on stories of culture. His films include 20 Feet from Stardom, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (screened at WRBA 2017), Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, Keith Richards: Under the Influence, and The Cool School.