Directing Documentaries with Steve James & Bing Liu (AMERICA TO ME)

Steve James previous work includes Hoop Dreams, winner of every major critics prize and a Directors Guild of America Award, a Peabody and Robert F. Kennedy Award. Other award winning films include Sundance winner, Stevie; International Documentary Association winning miniseries The New Americans; The Interrupters, which won an Emmy, Independent Spirit Award, and the DuPont Columbia Journalism Award; and the Emmy-winning Life Itself, named the best documentary of 2014 by over a dozen critics associations, including The Critic’s Choice Awards, The National Board of Review, and The Producers Guild of America. His most recent film, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, earned James a fourth Directors Guild of America nomination, won a Critics Choice Award and an Emmy, and was nominated for an Academy Award, James' second. His Starz docuseries, America to Me premiered at Sundance and is one of the most acclaimed TV shows of 2018. 

Bing Liu is a China-born, Midwest-raised filmmaker best known for directing MINDING THE GAP, which was nominated for Best Feature Documentary at the 91st Academy Awards and won a Peabody. He was also a segment director on AMERICA TO ME, which premiered on Starz and was hailed as one of the best TV shows of the year. He co-directed ALL THESE SONS with Josh Altman, which won Best Cinematography at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and the Maysles Award at the Denver International Film Festival. Liu has been supported by Kartemquin’s Diverse Voices in Documentary, a Film Independent Fellowship and Truer Than Fiction Award, the Garrett Scott Development Grant, the United States Artists fellowship, the SFFILM Westridge Fellowship, the Sundance Screenwriter and Director Labs, the Sundance Institute Asian American Fellowship and the Concordia Fellowship. He is currently developing several scripted and non-fiction projects.

Artist's Chosen Interview:

• "I Had a Moral Crisis": Bing Liu on Minding the Gap, Personal Doc Voiceovers, and Cycles of Abuse

Artist's Chosen Resources:

• How To Be Alone
• The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
• What Writers Really Do When They Write
• Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong