Minding the Gap | Little White Lies

Mind­ing the Gap

19 Mar 2019 / Released: 22 Mar 2019

Words by Adam Woodward

Directed by Bing Liu

Starring Bing Liu, Keire Johnson, and Zack Mulligan

Smiling Black man in green and purple shirt outdoors.
Smiling Black man in green and purple shirt outdoors.
3

Anticipation.

A skate film from a first-time director? Could be fun.

4

Enjoyment.

Extraordinary. Far, far more than the sum of its scrappy parts.

5

In Retrospect.

A profound study of youth, adulthood and the space in between.

An inno­cent cel­e­bra­tion of skate­board­ing evolves into a pro­found study of the tran­si­tion from youth to adulthood.

It begins, as films about skate­board­ing so often do, with a group of friends slow­ly carv­ing their way through seem­ing­ly aban­doned streets – the long, hazy sum­mer of their youth at its bliss­ful mid­day peak. They per­form tricks, goof around and gen­er­al­ly hang out at all the usu­al spots: local skateparks; friends’ hous­es; fast food joints; school yards; every­day urban spaces where smooth con­crete lines and ledges pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for expres­sion and to stake a claim to greatness.

It’s a famil­iar pic­ture of teenage rever­ie and a thrilling­ly unfil­tered evo­ca­tion of what it means to be young and free. But this is no ordi­nary skate video, even though it may have start­ed out as one. When Bing Liu first began film­ing his tight-knit crew around their home­town of Rock­ford, Illi­nois, he sim­ply hoped to gath­er enough footage to cut togeth­er a mon­tage of the gnarly stunts and good times that were being had. He cer­tain­ly nev­er envi­sioned turn­ing a decade’s worth of mate­r­i­al into a pro­found per­son­al state­ment on what it means to come of age in Amer­i­ca today.

This rev­e­la­tion occurs when Bing notices that many of the kids in Rockford’s skate­board­ing com­mu­ni­ty are strug­gling with the same anx­i­eties and uncer­tain­ties. Act­ing on impulse, he sits down and asks them about their expe­ri­ences, and in turn they open up to him about every­thing that’s going on with them. A pat­tern of absent par­ents and tough upbring­ings emerges, etched onto a back­drop of social decay in a Rust Belt town hit hard by reces­sion and ris­ing unem­ploy­ment. What was ini­tial­ly a light­heart­ed snap­shot of bruised knees and bro­ken boards sud­den­ly becomes an inti­mate por­trait of bruised psy­ches and bro­ken homes.

Forc­ing him­self to become an active par­tic­i­pant in his sub­jects’ lives, Bing encour­ages two of his clos­est com­pan­ions, Kiere and Zack, to share their thoughts on mas­culin­i­ty, men­tal health and rela­tion­ships, as well as repressed mem­o­ries from their child­hoods. At one point Kiere, the youngest of the three, recalls a time when he was dis­ci­plined by his late father. Well, they call it child abuse’ now…” he haz­ards before skirt­ing around the details of the beat­ing he suf­fered. Did you cry?” urges Bing, to which Kiere coun­ters, Wouldn’t you?” I did,” says Bing.

Per­haps the bravest trick Bing pulls off in Mind­ing the Gap is a 180 with his cam­era. Near the end of the film he inter­views his estranged moth­er, con­fronting her about her vio­lent ex-hus­band (Bing’s step­fa­ther) in the hope of shed­ding some light on his own his­to­ry of domes­tic abuse. Though it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly bring the clo­sure he’s look­ing for, this heart-wrench­ing moment reveals to Bing – and the audi­ence – that grown-ups are just as fal­li­ble as kids, and they most cer­tain­ly don’t have all the answers.

The film’s title ulti­mate­ly refers not to the phys­i­cal dis­tance between two sur­faces but the emo­tion­al leap young peo­ple are sup­posed and indeed expect­ed to make en route to adult­hood. Yet if noth­ing else this remark­able film proves that matu­ri­ty and age are by no means direct­ly proportional.

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