Bing Liu’s intimate documentary initially seems like little more than a celebration of the simple joys of skateboarding while being young and carefree, a family drama of two young twenty-somethings raising a child together, and the struggle to make a living in a small city, but it seamlessly slides into the spiraling pain of intergenerational trauma, domestic abuse, and toxic masculinity.
The idea of a documentary being about its maker rather than its subjects may be tired and worn-out, but Bing Liu’s ability to refract his own story through the prism of others enables his own revelations to reverberate throughout the lives of everyone in the film. The alienation of abuse, the ethics of a documentarian, the tension between making art for art’s sake or as an extension of the self: Minding the Gap stares unflinchingly into a generation’s pain, the emotions and memories that fall through the cracks.
Only his first feature film, the sheer fluidity of Liu’s footage lights a fire under the film so that its entire apparatus seems vibrant and dances with energy. There’s urgency to their lives, to Liu’s introspection, to the staggering difference between hope and despondency that Minding the Gap bears on its shoulders.
– Josh Hamm
- Directed by: Bing Liu
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- Written by:
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- Release Date: 2018
- Running Time: 93
- Language: English
Arts & Faith Lists:
2018 Top 10 — #7