ST. GEORGE — As the Oscar-nominated films were announced this week, one of the films stood out and filled the Docutah International Documentary Film Festival team with excitement and pride.
“Minding the Gap,” which won the 2018 Raven Award for Emerging Artist at Docutah, was nominated in the category for Best Documentary Feature.
Phil Tuckett, professor of digital film at Dixie State University and executive director of the Docutah International Documentary Film Festival said in a press release that they are delighted the Academy also recognized the documentary for being what the New York Times called a “remarkable debut feature.”
“We congratulate these talented young filmmakers,” Tuckett said in the press release. “This is not the first time DOCUTAH filmmakers have been so honored, but it does not surprise us. Each year the quality of films that are submitted to DOCUTAH makes it difficult to choose which to include in the Festival.”
According to a press kit, “Minding the Gap” is a film about three young men who bond across racial lines to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown of Rockford, Illinois. Ten years later, while facing adult responsibilities, unsettling revelations force them to reckon with their fathers, their mothers and each other.
The New York Times review continued to say that “Minding the Gap” is more than a celebration of skateboarding as a sport and a subculture. It reads:
With infinite sensitivity, Mr. Liu delves into some of the most painful and intimate details of his friends’ lives and his own, and then layers his observations into a rich, devastating essay on race, class and manhood in 21st-century America.
For more information on the film, go the “Minding the Gap” website.
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