Bing Liu on his Film “Minding the Gap”

LIU: So, the film covers 12 years because that’s how much footage I was able to get. But I started, in earnest, in 2012. So you know five or six years ago before it premiered at Sundance. And you know I was drawn to this idea of young people being able to explore things that typically we don’t get to see them explore, especially young men. And doing it on screen. So what I started doing was actually going around the country in the United States and I started following skateboarders from all over. And then a year in, I went back to Rockford, Illinois where I grew up and that’s where I met one of the people who I’d end up following long term. And at that point I started working with the production company in Chicago, where I was living, called Kartemquin Films and they’re best known for a film called “Hoop Dreams.” And that’s when I realized oh, well documentaries can be like fiction films in the sense that, you know, we can follow characters and out of these characters’ lives then we can get at these same issues and themes without being as on the nose about it. So that’s when I started committing to a long form project like this.

AMANPOUR: So — so being you’re one of the characters, although you’re mostly the — the — the interrogator or the questioner, if you like. Then there’s Zack and then there’s Kiere as well. I’m going to play this flip, which really focuses on — on Kiere for a while and — and it’s about the moment where you sort of reveal the domestic abuse and violence that he’s been through that turns out links all of you in this film. Let’s just take a look.

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LIU: How did you get disciplined?

KIERE JOHNSON, “MINDING THE GAP”: I mean well, they call it child abuse now but it’s — that shit makes you angry like, oh god. It like — it like boils my blood, dude. Like ugh.

LIU: How bad did it get? Like did you ever cry?

JOHNSON: Of course. Of course. Like, I mean wouldn’t you?

LIU: I did cry.

JOHNSON: I feel like everybody cries.