Presented by Bread Garden Market, Little Village, and FilmScene

Vino Vérité event:
DIALOGUE: Director Bing Liu in person
Sunday, May 6, 7pm

Free Youth Screening:
DIALOGUE: Director Bing Liu in person
Sunday, May 6, 11am
(open admission to area youth ages 13-21)

The fourth selection of our third season has taken the film festival world by storm — over 25 selections — since a Jury Prize win at Sundance in January. First-time filmmaker Bing Liu delivers an achingly honest portrait of his skate crew, three young men. A powerful film that announces the arrival of a bright young storyteller. 

The Vino Vérité series features talented new voices and established filmmakers influenced by the vérité tradition in person to present their thought-provoking, chance-taking, and visually-arresting films. Each selection is paired with hand-selected wines from Bread Garden Market.

Tickets: $25 public / $20 for members. Includes wine tasting, film, hors d'oeuvres and filmmaker reception.

6:30 Hors d'oeuvres & wine tasting
7:00 Theater open for seating
7:15 Screening
9:00 Q&A + Reception with filmmaker, wine and dessert

MINDING THE GAP

"An audacious debut on all levels...a storyteller to watch." — Hollywood Reporter

"A seamless symphony of anguish and euphoria." — RogerEbert.com 

"A lyrical skateboard ballet when it wants to be and critical introspection amidst the tumult of family and friendship when it absolutely has to be." — IndieWire

A skate crew scales buildings and rips through an empty parking ramp in the fitting opening to Bing Liu's Minding the Gap — announcing both a story and filmmaker bursting with a renegade life amid industrial decay.

First-time filmmaker Liu's coming-of-age saga follows three skateboarding friends (one of the them director) in their Rust Belt hometown of Rockford, IL, hit hard by decades of recession. Peppered with images shot over a decade, Bing quests to understand why he and his friends all ran away from home when they were younger, and the impact it has had on adulthood as 23-year-old Zack becomes a father and 17-year-old Keire gets his first job.

As the film unfolds, Bing is thrust into the middle of Zack's tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend and newborn child and Keire's inner struggle with racial identity and his deceased father. His search also turns inward as he examines his own difficult family life.

Open and honest about his process, Bing navigates a complex relationship between his camera and his friends, exploring the gap between fathers and sons, between discipline and domestic abuse, and ultimately that precarious chasm between childhood and becoming an adult.

"As a work of nonfiction, it's stunning; as a piece of storytelling, it's heartbreaking." — Vox

"The film is nothing less than a watershed - there has never been a more in-depth portrayal of late-adolescent masculinity." — Copenhagen Post

"What Liu renders crystal-clear in Minding the Gap is that all his friends - and indeed, many skaters around the world and throughout time - are trying to make up for families and societies that let them down, trying to build adulthood atop childhoods they feel they didn't have. It's a hard lesson, but one rendered tolerable, for us and for the film's subjects, by the frame of skating's lyric poetry in space, its stubborn grace against all odds." —Indy Week

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Bing 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 craft 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 Cinematographer's 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 an upcoming Steve James mini-series, America To Me. Bing is a 2017 Film Independent Fellow and Garrett Scott Development Grant recipient. 

Sundance Film Festival (2018) — Special Jury Award, Breakthrough Filmmaking
Ashland Independent Film Festival (2018) — Winner, Best Documentary Editing
Sun Valley Film Festival (2018) — Winner, One in a Million Award
CPH:DOX (2018) — Official Selection
Hot Docs (2018) — Official Selection