A modern tragedy of male pride plays out in this low-key character study from Johan Carlsen (co-written with Micah Magee), which charts the microsteps to isolation of its central character Kurt (Zack Mulligan) - a Midwest family man whose inability to swallow his ego sees him slip from the moorings of his life.
Kurt is a willing labourer, happy to turn his hand to farm jobs big or small. While that counts for a lot in a place like this, where being a hard worker is something that is viewed with respect, the ingrained cultural importance of being able to graft for your family proves to be a double-edged sword as work starts to dry up. Helping hands are extended but Kurt just can't seem to find it in himself to take any of them because it somehow conflicts with his need to be the breadwinner.
Respect - or the lack of it -.
Kurt is a willing labourer, happy to turn his hand to farm jobs big or small. While that counts for a lot in a place like this, where being a hard worker is something that is viewed with respect, the ingrained cultural importance of being able to graft for your family proves to be a double-edged sword as work starts to dry up. Helping hands are extended but Kurt just can't seem to find it in himself to take any of them because it somehow conflicts with his need to be the breadwinner.
Respect - or the lack of it -.
- 6/7/2021
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
There’s a question looming above the entirety of Death on the Streets, European Johan Carlsen’s film about a self-destroyed American man: Is Kurt a failure? To anyone who sees his life with wife Sarah (Katie Folger), two young sons, and an expansive (albeit intrusive) support system, the answer is a resounding “No.” To Kurt, however, there’s zero wiggle room for believing the opposite. He’s allowed that belief. He’s allowed the depression, anger, and anxiety created by unemployment as he further distances himself from the people who love him. There’s an interesting story within those emotions—especially today. Unfortunately, Carlsen and Micah Magee’s script comes up short.
Some of that truth is a product of the budget. This is a shoestring production utilizing non-actors who often arrive onscreen, hit their mark, and deliver their lines before abruptly leaving. A large portion of the runtime...
Some of that truth is a product of the budget. This is a shoestring production utilizing non-actors who often arrive onscreen, hit their mark, and deliver their lines before abruptly leaving. A large portion of the runtime...
- 6/7/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Directing a documentary that resonates deeply with critics and audiences comes with what might be called an enviable downside: an awards season that tests a filmmaker’s endurance.
“It never ends,” jokes Bing Liu, who’s been on an incredible run with his film Minding the Gap, beginning in January 2018 with the world premiere at Sundance. It won a Special Jury Award there for Breakthrough Filmmaking, recognizing how skillfully Liu told the story of growing up in Rockford, Illinois where he and friends Zack Mulligan and Keire Johnson gravitated toward skateboarding to escape families torn by emotional abuse.
The film claimed Best Documentary at the Ida Awards last December, and won numerous other awards en route to an Oscar nomination earlier this year. Now attention shifts to the Emmy Awards, where Minding the Gap could earn nominations in multiple categories.
“Part of what has been great about the awards campaign that has already happened,...
“It never ends,” jokes Bing Liu, who’s been on an incredible run with his film Minding the Gap, beginning in January 2018 with the world premiere at Sundance. It won a Special Jury Award there for Breakthrough Filmmaking, recognizing how skillfully Liu told the story of growing up in Rockford, Illinois where he and friends Zack Mulligan and Keire Johnson gravitated toward skateboarding to escape families torn by emotional abuse.
The film claimed Best Documentary at the Ida Awards last December, and won numerous other awards en route to an Oscar nomination earlier this year. Now attention shifts to the Emmy Awards, where Minding the Gap could earn nominations in multiple categories.
“Part of what has been great about the awards campaign that has already happened,...
- 5/2/2019
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
This Sundance-winning and Oscar-nominated debut feature from supremely talented newcomer Bing Liu revolves around three skateboard-loving youngsters coming of age in the socially and financially deprived Rust Belt town of Rockford, Illinois. Liu himself is one of them, the director drawing on over 12 years of intimate home-video footage to showcase the bond he shared with friends Keire and Zack – the latter quickly emerging as the joker of the pack in early scenes of drunken house parties and familiar adolescent rebellion.
It’s watchable enough stuff, but it’s not until the first skating sequences – Liu, often following behind on his own board, filming the others as they snake through multstorey car parks and eerily empty streets – that you realise you’re watching something special. Liu has a masterful eye for editing. In his care an activity that by nature can often be so jerky and stop-start becomes fluid, graceful, hypnotic...
It’s watchable enough stuff, but it’s not until the first skating sequences – Liu, often following behind on his own board, filming the others as they snake through multstorey car parks and eerily empty streets – that you realise you’re watching something special. Liu has a masterful eye for editing. In his care an activity that by nature can often be so jerky and stop-start becomes fluid, graceful, hypnotic...
- 3/22/2019
- by Andy Psyllides
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Chicago – All through the 2019 Oscar Week, HollywoodChicago.com will rerun significant articles from 2018 that feature the nominees associated with Sunday’s Academy Award ceremony. Today is a Podtalk with director Bing Liu, who was the filmmaker behind a Best Documentary Feature nominee, “Minding the Gap.” The film seems to be a nostalgic profile of Liu’s youth in Rockford, Illinois, as he goes back to his hometown to explore the skateboarding culture that kept him balanced while growing up in a difficult home environment. What he found out about himself was an organic reveal in the film, both shocking and cathartic.
The film, available on the online Hulu Network, will also have a free TV broadcast on Monday, February 18th, 2019, on Chicago’s PBS Station Wttw. Besides Liu featuring himself in the documentary, he also profiles fellow Rockford skateboarders Zack Mulligan and Keire Johnson, and finds commonality in their family lives.
The film, available on the online Hulu Network, will also have a free TV broadcast on Monday, February 18th, 2019, on Chicago’s PBS Station Wttw. Besides Liu featuring himself in the documentary, he also profiles fellow Rockford skateboarders Zack Mulligan and Keire Johnson, and finds commonality in their family lives.
- 2/18/2019
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
“I think part of what I was doing … was just trying to figure out how to become a better man,” says director Bing Liu about the inspiration for his film “Minding the Gap,” which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. The film explores the lives of young men in the embattled city of Rockford, Illinois, and how their adulthoods can be shaped by childhood traumas — including Liu’s. He was abused by his stepfather, and however hard he tried to escape the cycle of abuse, he admits, “I was scared that I was going to accidentally become him anyway.” Watch our exclusive video interview with Liu above.
“I started to notice a lot of peers taking on traits that I felt were inherited,” Liu explains. That includes one of the film’s primary subjects, Zack Mulligan, an expectant father who Liu learns hit his girlfriend Nina. “A...
“I started to notice a lot of peers taking on traits that I felt were inherited,” Liu explains. That includes one of the film’s primary subjects, Zack Mulligan, an expectant father who Liu learns hit his girlfriend Nina. “A...
- 2/15/2019
- by Daniel Montgomery
- Gold Derby
While Bing Liu was shooting his Oscar-nominated “Minding the Gap” in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois, he was simultaneously trying to advance his professional career working 90 minutes away in Chicago. “I was doing this all on the side,” said Liu when he appeared on the IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “I was working crew in Chicago and whenever I got a free moment I would drive up to Rockford.”
Liu spent much of his early 20s driving around the country meeting and talking to other young adults who, like him, had “fractured” childhoods. It was in his hometown, Rockford, where he found two incredibly dynamic documentary subjects, Keire Johnson and Zack Mulligan, who, also like Liu, had found refuge and family in skateboarding. While both young men are open and forthright on camera, neither was particularly communicative with Liu when it came to meeting up to shoot.
“For actual verite scenes,...
Liu spent much of his early 20s driving around the country meeting and talking to other young adults who, like him, had “fractured” childhoods. It was in his hometown, Rockford, where he found two incredibly dynamic documentary subjects, Keire Johnson and Zack Mulligan, who, also like Liu, had found refuge and family in skateboarding. While both young men are open and forthright on camera, neither was particularly communicative with Liu when it came to meeting up to shoot.
“For actual verite scenes,...
- 2/15/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
On Oscar nomination morning, director RaMell Ross tuned in to see if his documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening would make the cut. A year earlier it would have seemed like the longest of long shots, a film without major distribution that defied easy description, dealing with African-American life in the rural South.
Yet when nominations co-host Tracee Ellis Ross (no relation) announced the documentary feature category, there it was: Hale County had beaten the odds.
“I was at home with my partner. We woke up 10 minutes before the announcement, not to stress too much,” Ross recalls. “And then when it happened we both looked at each other and continued watching. We let time pass just to make sure they didn’t back up and go, ‘We actually made a mistake.’”
What Hale County’s nomination tells us is that Oscar Documentary Branch voters gave due consideration to all...
Yet when nominations co-host Tracee Ellis Ross (no relation) announced the documentary feature category, there it was: Hale County had beaten the odds.
“I was at home with my partner. We woke up 10 minutes before the announcement, not to stress too much,” Ross recalls. “And then when it happened we both looked at each other and continued watching. We let time pass just to make sure they didn’t back up and go, ‘We actually made a mistake.’”
What Hale County’s nomination tells us is that Oscar Documentary Branch voters gave due consideration to all...
- 2/11/2019
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
To make his Oscar-nominated documentary “Of Fathers and Sons,” director Talal Derki lived with Syrian extremists and acted like an Al-Qaeda sympathizer for two and a half years. If Derki wanted to expose the toxic patriarchy in a war-torn Middle East, he either had to pull the best acting performance of his life, or risk losing his life altogether.
“Even before the cameras started, I was playing a role,” Derki told TheWrap Editor in Chief Sharon Waxman. “This is a war on ideology, and the only way to fight it is to understand.”
All five of this year’s Oscar nominees for best documentary came together Thursday for a Q&A at TheWrap’s documentary features showcase. In attendance at the Landmark Theatres in Los Angeles was Derki, “Free Solo” producer Shannon Dill and editor Bob Eisenhardt, and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” director RaMell Ross. Joining via Skype...
“Even before the cameras started, I was playing a role,” Derki told TheWrap Editor in Chief Sharon Waxman. “This is a war on ideology, and the only way to fight it is to understand.”
All five of this year’s Oscar nominees for best documentary came together Thursday for a Q&A at TheWrap’s documentary features showcase. In attendance at the Landmark Theatres in Los Angeles was Derki, “Free Solo” producer Shannon Dill and editor Bob Eisenhardt, and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” director RaMell Ross. Joining via Skype...
- 2/8/2019
- by Omar Sanchez
- The Wrap
Debra Granik, who directed and wrote “Leave No Trace,” has received Film Independent’s second Bonnie Award, given to recognize a mid-career female director.
The trophy, which includes a $50,000 grant, was presented Saturday afternoon to “Leave No Trace” producer Anne Rosellini at the organization’s Spirit Awards brunch at Boa Steakhouse in West Hollywood. Granik could not attend.
Her film, which centers on a father (played by Ben Foster) and daughter living in the Oregon wilderness, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. “Leave No Trace” is up for three Spirits for best feature, director, and actress for Thomasin McKenzie.
The award is named after Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo, who joined American Airlines in 1973 at age 24, becoming the first female pilot to fly for a major U.S. airline. It was inaugurated last year with “The Rider” director Chloe Zhao as the first recipient. Karyn Kusama (“Destroyer”) and Tamara Jenkins (“Private Life”) were the other finalists.
The trophy, which includes a $50,000 grant, was presented Saturday afternoon to “Leave No Trace” producer Anne Rosellini at the organization’s Spirit Awards brunch at Boa Steakhouse in West Hollywood. Granik could not attend.
Her film, which centers on a father (played by Ben Foster) and daughter living in the Oregon wilderness, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. “Leave No Trace” is up for three Spirits for best feature, director, and actress for Thomasin McKenzie.
The award is named after Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo, who joined American Airlines in 1973 at age 24, becoming the first female pilot to fly for a major U.S. airline. It was inaugurated last year with “The Rider” director Chloe Zhao as the first recipient. Karyn Kusama (“Destroyer”) and Tamara Jenkins (“Private Life”) were the other finalists.
- 1/5/2019
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
Bing Liu’s skateboarding movie “Minding The Gap” has won the International Documentary Association’s award for top feature of 2018.
Floyd Russ’s “Zion” was awarded best short. Netflix’s “Wild Wild Country” won for best limited series and HBO’s “John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls” took the ABC News VideoSource Award. PBS’ “Pov” won for best curated series, Showtime’s “The Trade” for best episodic series, Mel Films for best short form series, and Jayisha Patel’s “Circle” for the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award.
Both Melissa Haizlip’s “Mr. Soul!” and Steve Loveridge’s “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.” were each awarded best music documentary while “Bisbee ’17” and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” were each awarded best music score. The New York Times’ “Caliphate” took the inaugural award in the audio documentary category.
Ricki Lake hosted the ceremonies Saturday night for the 34th...
Floyd Russ’s “Zion” was awarded best short. Netflix’s “Wild Wild Country” won for best limited series and HBO’s “John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls” took the ABC News VideoSource Award. PBS’ “Pov” won for best curated series, Showtime’s “The Trade” for best episodic series, Mel Films for best short form series, and Jayisha Patel’s “Circle” for the David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award.
Both Melissa Haizlip’s “Mr. Soul!” and Steve Loveridge’s “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.” were each awarded best music documentary while “Bisbee ’17” and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” were each awarded best music score. The New York Times’ “Caliphate” took the inaugural award in the audio documentary category.
Ricki Lake hosted the ceremonies Saturday night for the 34th...
- 12/9/2018
- by Dave McNary
- Variety Film + TV
‘Minding the Gap’ Director Bing Liu Reveals the Connection Between Skateboarding and Personal Growth
Bing Liu didn’t originally think he would include himself in “Minding the Gap,” his documentary about skateboarding and intergenerational violence. But once he began filming his other subjects, he reconsidered.
Liu first began filming skateboarders six years ago, he told the crowd after a showing of his film at the International Documentary Association’s annual screening series in Los Angeles. He’d talk to them after they’d finished skating, so they were in great moods and open to his questions. Once he zeroed in on his two main subjects, skateboarding buddies from his hometown whom he’d filmed while growing up in Rockford, Ill., Liu was able to delve deeper into their lives — including some uncomfortable and intimate questions.
“What we do as documentary filmmakers is we toe this line between public and private,” he said at the Q&A, adding later, “putting myself in the film was...
Liu first began filming skateboarders six years ago, he told the crowd after a showing of his film at the International Documentary Association’s annual screening series in Los Angeles. He’d talk to them after they’d finished skating, so they were in great moods and open to his questions. Once he zeroed in on his two main subjects, skateboarding buddies from his hometown whom he’d filmed while growing up in Rockford, Ill., Liu was able to delve deeper into their lives — including some uncomfortable and intimate questions.
“What we do as documentary filmmakers is we toe this line between public and private,” he said at the Q&A, adding later, “putting myself in the film was...
- 11/10/2018
- by Jean Bentley
- Indiewire
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