Bing Liu
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Marathon Training: The Documentary Awards Season Grind
By the time you read this, awards season, that annual ritual of accolades and extroversion, will be full throttle. Mounting and sustaining a campaign is often prohibitive, both as a budgetary line item and as an all-consuming occupation. Contenders live in the air and in hotels, go where their team sends them, agree to hundreds of interviews and participate in just as many Q&As and roundtables. But on the upside, an awards campaign is an opportunity to build a worldwide network of friends and contemporaries. Filmmaker reached out to former Academy Award nominees in the Feature Documentary category to share […]
by Tom White on Sep 20, 2023 -
Sundance Institute Announces 2023 Momentum Fellows
The Sundance Institute announces eight filmmakers selected for the fifth annual Momentum Fellowship, a program created to provide financial support and coaching for mid-career artists from underrepresented communities. The year-long fellowship is tailored for artists who have recently achieved a major accomplishment—such as a successful feature film or episodic work—and offers customized guidance for the fellows as they aim to level up in their careers. “Over the years, the fellows selected for Momentum have all experienced success with their recently completed projects. This has often been a critical moment for artists to receive creative and tactical support as they focus […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 2, 2023 -
Top 10 Picks for IDFA 2018
The program for the 31st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November 14th – 25th) — the first under the new artistic directorship of Syrian documentary filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia — feels equal parts familiar and fresh. On the one hand, as in years past, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world’s largest nonfiction film festival. Once again the fest will include exceptional industry events like the IDFA Forum (and Docs for Sale, the IDFA Bertha Fund, IDFA Academy, etc.), competitions (14 in total), and more meet-and-greets and parties than one can reasonably attend. (Do I […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 13, 2018 -
“How Do You Possibly Do Justice to All This in a Single Film?”: Steve James on America to Me
Steve James has never shied away from going big. From his 1994 breakthrough, the near-three-hour Hoop Dreams, through long-players like Stevie and The Interrupters, the filmmaker has never been afraid to blow well past documentary’s traditional 90-minute mark. (He’s also played ball, as with 2016’s Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which clocks in at a brisk 88.) Still, even for James, America to Me is ambitious. It’s his second dalliance with TV, after 2004’s The New Americans, spanning 10 hour-long episodes, which begin on Starz on Aug. 26. But it’s not just size that matters. It’s the scope, and the […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 25, 2018 -
“I Had a Moral Crisis”: Bing Liu on Minding the Gap, Personal Doc Voiceovers and Cycles of Abuse
Bing Liu’s first feature documentary, Minding the Gap, draws upon a deep trove of skater tapes he’d kept since his teen years. The film tracks three male skaters growing up (or failing to) in economically dispossessed Rockford, IL. Two are the director’s old friends: in between countless beers, Zack is introduced as he prepares to have a child he clearly isn’t ready for with his girlfriend Nina. Keire doesn’t have any attachments beyond family, but finding his first job is a struggle; the ultimate goal is to get out. The third character is the filmmaker himself. What all three subjects have in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 15, 2018 -
“We Cut Countless Versions of this Scene”: Editors Bing Liu and Joshua Altman on Minding the Gap
Joshua Altman cut his first Sundance-bound documentary in 2009 with We Live in Public. The film – Altman’s first as an editor of documentary features – went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at the festival. Since then, Altman has cut five more docs to premiere at Sundance: The Tillman Story (2010), Bones Brigade: an Autobiography (2012), We Are The Giant (2014) and, in 2018 alone, both Kailash and Minding The Gap. The latter film he cut with film’s director, Bing Liu. Liu himself appears in the film among a trio of friends who bond over skateboarding in their Rust Belt town. Below, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2018 -
“The Film Began As an Experimental Skate Video”: Director and DP Bing Liu on Minding the Gap
A camera assistant who has worked on The Girlfriend Experience, Sense8 and Chi-Raq, 24-year-old Bing Liu makes his debut as a feature documentary filmmaker with Minding the Gap. The film was made with the help of production partners Kartemquin Films, ITVS and POV, and it includes an executive producer credit from Steve James. Minding the Gap‘s three leads bond in part over skateboarding, and as such the film includes extensive footage of its leads on their boards. As he discusses below, Bing used a number of different methods to “shoot skateboarding in a way that I hadn’t seen before.” Minding the Gap […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2018 -
“How Are American Men Being Made?”: Director Bing Liu | Minding the Gap
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? It’s difficult to describe any part of the filmmaking process as not chaotic – Minding the Gap was by far the most difficult task I’d ever tried to take on. I was working on all these other projects and writing grants to fund the film and all the while my mom was fighting through a violent […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018
