''Linsanity'' is a 2013 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

about the rise of

Asian-American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

player

Jeremy Lin Jeremy Shu-How Lin (born August 23, 1988) is a Taiwanese-American professional basketball player who last played for the Guangzhou Loong Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). He unexpectedly led a winning turnaround with the Ne ...

. The film was directed by

Evan Jackson Leong Evan Jackson Leong (or Evan Leong) is a director and documentary filmmaker. Leong is likely most known for his documentary '' Linsanity'' about Jeremy Lin, which made its world premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He has also directed th ...

. The film traces Lin's life from his childhood in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

to his rise to prominence in 2012 with the

New York Knicks The New York Knickerbockers, shortened and more commonly referred to as the New York Knicks, are an American professional basketball team based in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The Knicks compete in the National Basketball Associat ...

in the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

(NBA). It shows him overcoming discouragements and

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

and achieving success through his faith and desire. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote that it also offered a rare view of

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

among Asian Americans. Leong had filmed Lin since he was a star

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

player at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and during his early struggles in the NBA. The film is narrated by actor Daniel Dae Kim. The documentary shows Lin predicting in 2011 that he would "become a rotation player, become a starting

point guard The point guard (PG), also called the one or the point, is one of the five Basketball positions, positions in a regulation basketball game. A point guard has perhaps the most specialized role of any position. Point guards are expected to run t ...

and then win an

NBA championship The NBA Finals is the annual championship series of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Eastern and Western Conference champions play a best-of-seven game series to determine the league champion. The team that wins the series is awa ...

." He eventually won an NBA title with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.

Release

''Linsanity'' premiered to a sold-out screening at the

2013 Sundance Film Festival The 2013 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 17, 2013, until January 27, 2013, in Park City, Utah, United States, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ogden, Utah, and Sundance, Utah. The festival had 1,830 volunteers. Films A r ...

on January 20, 2013. The ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' wrote that it received a "rousing response, easily making it one of the most crowd-pleasing documentaries to play the festival this year." ''Linsanity'' was the opening night film for the

CAAMFest CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), is presented every March in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States as the nation’s largest showcase for new Asian American and Asia ...

film festival in San Francisico, where it opened to a sellout on March 14. It made its Asian premiere on March 30 in a sold-out screening at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. The film also opened the

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) – formerly known as VC FilmFest – is an annual film festival presented by Visual Communications (VC). It was established in 1983 by Linda Mabalot as a vehicle to promote Asian Pacific Amer ...

on May 2. The film's distribution in the United States was being handled by Creative Artists Agency, while Fortissimo Films obtained the international distribution rights. Ketchup Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based distribution company, picked up US distribution rights for ''Linsanity'' on July 24, 2013. Stephen Stanley of Ketchup negotiated the deal with Nick Ogiony and Dan Steinman of CAA, Gregory Schenz at Endgame Entertainment and Helen Dooley at Williams & Connolly. The film was shown at

art house An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

s, and was subsequently made available for download and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

Reception

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 65% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 5.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''Linsanity'' offers a compelling enough look at its basketball star subject for fans and curious viewers, even if it never really delves below the surface." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a score of 52 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

* * *{{Rotten Tomatoes, linsanity_2013 2013 films Documentary films about sportspeople Documentary films about Asian Americans Documentary films about basketball Films about Chinese Americans Films about Taiwanese Americans Chinese-American culture Chinese-language American films