Award-winning documentary short film, The Last Repair Shop, now playing on YouTube
Playing on Los Angeles Times’ YouTube channel and latimes.com from Searchlight Pictures and the L.A. Times Studios is the award-winning documentary short film, The Last Repair Shop, Winner of the 2023 Critics Choice Documentary Awards for Best Short Documentary and directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers.
In a nondescript warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain over 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of the recording capital of the world.
Led by the charming general manager, Steve Bagmanyan, the film introduces a technician from each department: Dana Atkinson, in the strings division, who takes us to his personal breaking point as a young man confronting his sexuality; Paty Moreno, in charge of brass and the sole woman in the shop, who chronicles her pursuit of the American dream as a Mexican immigrant and single mother; Duane Michaels, a quirky, self-described hillbilly who fixes the woodwind instruments and shares the rip-roaring tale of how his $20 fiddle took him on tour with Elvis; and finally Steve himself, who learned to tune pianos in America after surviving a harrowing escape from ethnic persecution in Azerbaijan in the late 1980s, a conflict again in the headlines today.
The Last Repair Shop had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival. It subsequently had its international premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short.
Directed by Ben Proudfoot & Kris Bowers. Executive Produced by Jane Solomon, Peter Rotter, Ben Proudfoot, Kris Bowers, & Briana Henry. Produced by Ben Proudfoot, Kris Bowers, Jeremy Lambert & Josh Rosenberg. Edited by Nick Garnham Wright. Cinematography by David Feeney-Mosier. Original Score by Katya Richardson, with themes by Kris Bowers.
Proudfoot was the director of The Queen of Basketball, winner of the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. The story was about basketball legend Lusia Harris.
Previously, Bowers garnered an Oscar nomination for “Best Documentary Short Film” for his film A CONCERTO IS A CONVERSATION (2020), which he also directed alongside Ben Proudfoot. As a composer, he is currently gearing up for the release of some of his most highly anticipated projects, including Ava DuVernay’s ORIGIN later this year, Warner Bros. THE COLOR PURPLE, to be released in theaters December 25th and BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE due early 2024.