Wednesday, September 9, 2026, 7 – 8:30pm EDT
Methods for Urban Encounters: Observational Documentary The Esquire Theatre 320 Ludlow Avenue Wednesday, September 9 7–8:30pm / Doors open at 6:45pm
Presented in partnership with the Niehoff Center for Film and Media Studies, this three-part screening series offers new ways of understanding urban life through counternarratives and counterimages of the city. Highlighting what official city metrics, demographics, and maps cannot, each program focuses on a different method of encounter: observational documentary (September 9), sound (October 21), and mapping (November 4).
Minding the GapBing Liu2018 / 93 minutes
Filmmaker Bing Liu returns to Rockford, Illinois, a city hollowed out by unemployment, to follow two childhood friends he grew up skating with. Zack, 23, is unraveling as a new father in a relationship marred by domestic violence; Keire, 17, is navigating racial identity and grief after losing his father. As the footage accumulates over more than a decade, Liu is drawn into his own story, confronting the cycles of abuse that bound all three of them together—and skateboarding's role as the thing that kept them free.