Making art for art’s sake
To music students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, making art is its own reward. This sentiment conveyed in the short documentary “The Last Repair Shop” also earned the film and its Atlantic Canadian co-director an actual trophy, in the form of an Academy Award on March 10.
Ben Proudfoot, 33, of Halifax (“I am as 100 per cent Nova Scotian as donair meat”), took to the stage with his co-director Kris Bowers and 11-yearold Porché Brinker, a violinist featured in the film.
“If I didn't have my violin from school, I would probably — I don't know what I would do. Don't even jinx me with that,” Porché says in the opening scenes of “The Last Repair Shop,” which tells the story of the school district's Musical Instrument Repair Shop. The shop keeps thousands of violins, trumpets, clarinets and other instruments in working order for public school students of Los Angeles.
COMMUNITY SPIRIT
Like the toilers in the repair shop in Proudfoot's film, the exuberant Haligonian sees value in giving others the tools to succeed.
“I grew up in an environment where your job for life is to contribute to the community,” Proudfoot told SaltWire columnist John DeMont before Oscar night. “To find what you are good at and use it to do something positive for the people around you.”
Proudfoot has built a career out of this mantra, launching Breakwater Films in 2012 in Los Feliz, Calif., in Walt Disney's original office building.
The studio, which prides itself on telling the stories of unsung heroes like those who run the musical instrument repair shop, earned an Academy
trophy Award nomination in 2020 and took home the for best documentary short subject in 2022 for doing exactly that.
“It is a validation that this thing we felt worthy of celebrating was worthy of celebrating, and that is very special,” Proudfoot told DeMont Monday, March 11, a few hours after getting back from dancing and networking at Oscar after parties.
“I grew up in an environment where your job for life is to contribute to the community. To find what you are good at and use it to do something positive for the people around you.”
Ben Proudfoot
Academy Award winner from Nova Scotia
CREATIVE OUTLET
This outlook is salve for the soul these days, when political divisions, soaring costs of living and the ever-present risk of climate change are enough to turn anyone into a pessimist.
The children who benefit from the music instrument repair shop like Porché have their own challenges in their day-to-day lives. Music is a respite for them. “The Last Repair Shop” extends that appreciation for art to the rest of us.
At the same Academy Awards where Breakwater Films was honoured, composer Ludwig Göransson
“Oppenheimer” accepted the Oscar for his musical score for by thanking his parents for “giving me guitars, not video games.”
You don't have to be an Academy Award winning composer or filmmaker to know that there are benefits to finding a creative outlet. The result is better humans.
In a 2023 interview, Proudfoot said, “I think it's possible to make the world better and I think that people find, one way or another, their happiness.”