MINDING THE GAP

Synopsis

First-time filmmaker Bing Liu’s documentary Minding the Gap is a coming-of-age saga of three skateboarding friends in their Rust Belt hometown hit hard by decades of recession. In his quest to understand why he and his friends all ran away from home when they were younger, Bing follows 23-year-old Zack as he becomes a father and 17-year-old Keire as he gets his first job. As the film unfolds, Bing is thrust into the middle of Zack’s tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend and Keire’s inner struggles with racial identity and his deceased father. While navigating a complex relationship between his camera and his friends, Bing explores the gap between fathers and sons, between discipline and domestic abuse, and ultimately that precarious chasm between childhood and becoming an adult.

Director Biography

Bing Liu moved from China to Alabama to California to Rockford, Illinois with his mother all before he was 8 years old. He honed his cinematography and editing skills making DIY skateboarding films as a teenager. When he was 19 he moved to Chicago and began freelancing as a grip while attaining his B.A. in literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. At age 23 he joined the International Cinematographers Guild, working in the camera department on fiction films and episodic television series. In 2014 he began collaborating with Kartemquin Films on his first feature, Minding the Gap, a co-production of POV and ITVS. Bing is also a Story Director and DP for the upcoming Steve James mini-series, America to Me. Bing is a 2017 Film Independent Fellow and Garrett Scott Development Grant recipient.