Ben Proudfoot talks about his Oscar-nominated short documentary ‘The Last Repair Shop’ – The Hollywood Reporter

The magician-turned-film director uses cameras to create illusions through powerful, emotional narratives on the big screen. The Oscars have given their stamp of approval.

The Canadian director just received his third Oscar nomination in four years The last repair shop, his latest film is scheduled to compete in the Best Short Documentary Film category. This is after Proudfoot received his first Oscar nomination in 2020 for the short film A concerto is a conversationexecutive produced by Ava DuVernay, became an Academy Award winner in 2021 for the short documentary Basketball queenabout the late basketball pioneer Lucia “Lucy” Harris.

That puts Proudfoot among the best recent batting averages of Oscar contenders in Hollywood.

“It’s hard for me to deal with that. It’s an extraordinary honor. I feel like if there’s a secret ingredient, it’s the love that we put into our films,” he said. Hollywood Reporter After he and co-director and composer Chris Powers were nominated for their short doc about a musical instrument repair shop in the Los Angeles Unified School District, featuring four dedicated craftsmen who work there.

This is partly due to Proudfoot’s attention to minute detail The last repair shoppaid close attention to the sound and music of the coloring and editing choices in the 39-minute film, which explains his ability to engage and dazzle the film’s audiences and Academy voters through immersive storytelling.

But you have to go back to the hidden card and coin tricks that the Proudfoot teenager mastered as an award-winning magician and magician in Canada, and as a regular visitor at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, to understand the Los Angeles-based director’s obsession with pleasing people. An audience with cinematic poetry and crafts.

The result is that Proudfoot, a graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, can engage movie audiences with intimate stories of ordinary people who never dreamed the Oscar spotlight would one day swing in their direction.

Proudfoot sees the process of making short documentaries, as opposed to feature films, as putting glamorous magic shows on stage and reducing them to the level of close-up hand tricks.

“(Magic) has trained my mind to focus on the audience’s experience first. All your other decisions are subordinate to that. It doesn’t matter how you make the coin float, but the audience should experience the float of the coin. If you can tell a story that enhances that moment, it “It becomes really special.”

The same showmanship and illusion applies to the making of Oscar-worthy short documentaries. “You take something that seems ordinary and show how extraordinary it is, enhancing wonder, awe, emotion and humanity with your craft,” Proudfoot adds.

To find and infuse humanity into his documentary subjects, the director goes in search of what he calls “scanning” the lives of the people interviewed in his films in the form of more conversations. Proudfoot might start by asking someone about their earliest memories, then about their upbringing, their early desires and ambitions, and how they got from where they were to where they are now.

Most poignantly, Proudfoot looks to explore the personal challenges people face and how they overcome them, and uses movie magic throughout to connect human emotions and the values ​​of hard work and perseverance around what people say on screen.

Proudfoot also doesn’t believe in using reality TV models to determine believable characters after making casting calls and auditions for his short docs. Instead, he is patient enough to wait for someone’s life story to reveal itself on camera.

Proudfoot is so sure of his interviewing style, he insists that anyone can be asked about the details of their life and “I can guarantee we will cry” from the answers to his questions.

in The last repair shop, Proudfoot interviews four dedicated craftsmen in a Los Angeles warehouse who keep local high school students’ musical instruments in good working order—Dana Atkinson, in the string department, who grew up gay in the 1970s; Patty Moreno, a single mother who repairs brass instruments and left Mexico to chase the American dream; Duane Michaels, a quirky musician who toured with Elvis playing a $20 violin he bought at a flea market; And Steve Pagmanian, who learned to tune the piano in America after fleeing after surviving ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan.

He engages in conversation about their lives, with surprising intimacy, inspiring storytelling and music by co-director Powers. “You wouldn’t expect these reformers to be able to weave and weave a beautiful story that surprises you, haunts you, and hooks you — but they do,” insists the director.

Proudfoot has other tricks in his directorial bag, including a direct facial close-up of his short documentary subjects. For this, the director reveals that he uses an Interrotron, a variation of a teleprompter invented by fellow Oscar winner Errol Morris.

The result is a complex cinematic illusion that allows for this The last repair shop audience to see the faces, eyes, expressions – and apparently the spirit of the document’s four themes – as part of heartfelt conversations.

As if he was breaking the magicians’ code by revealing trade secrets Fog of war Proudfoot, the world director, remembers being terrified of bumping into Morris at the Telluride Film Festival, and admits he owes his Oscar-winning career to Interrotron. “I went up to (Maurice) and told him and there was a long moment – ​​a moment I had been dreading for years – and he finally said: ‘Do it!’” he recounts.

But this does not mean stealing Morris, but rather making a film with him The last repair shop About the people fixing what’s broken for young students whose musical instruments are a lifeline that allowed Proudfoot to receive a third Academy Award nomination.

“We’ve all broken relationships, broken promises. The world is broken in so many ways and not everything can be fixed. But if you have the faith and the will to try, some things are possible to fix. We need to keep that hope alive,” argues Proudfoot, ever the optimist.