The Last Repair Shop
Pull out your hankies for this deeply moving — and joyous — documentary short about the largest remaining workshop of its kind in the U.S., the musical instrument repair shop for the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Created in 1959, the workshop maintains and repairs the 80,000 instruments played by students in LA’s public schools. The film moves seamlessly between interviews with student musicians talking about what their violins, saxophones, and pianos mean to them and the stories of the master craftspeople who maintain these instruments.
If anything, this film is about how anything that has been broken — instruments, lives, people — can be repaired. Scenes of soldering, hammering, and gluing bring the workshop to life while Dana, who repairs string instruments, talks about the brokenness he felt as a young gay man many years ago and the courage it took for him to come out. Paty, a single mom from Mexico, describes the times she and her children had to go without food. Then she got her job, repairing brass instruments for the LAUSD.
The movie teems with the joy that comes from making music — and from knowing that your work benefits others. “It’s not easy being a kid,” Dana says as he works on a violin, “but we try to make at least the playing of the instrument part as good as it can be.”
And the Oscar goes to . . .
. . . all five films. Because each of these movies has something different and important to say about what talent and work means in this world, it was impossible to pick just one.
So sit back, fire up your favorite streaming service, and enjoy the show.
