Sierra Dague Supplemental Response 4

While the Oscars occurred several weeks ago, I highly recommend watching the Last Repair Shop, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. Ben Proudfoot, an USC alumni, co-directed it. The film is only around 45 minutes long and focuses on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s free musical instrument repair shop for its students, one of the last in the nation. Rather than documenting the process of repairing the instruments, however, it records the life stories of some of the workers. They explain the life events that led to them getting the job, the importance of their work, and include student testimonials. 

I bring this up now because I'm an intern for LAUSD board member Nick Melvoin. I had the fantastic opportunity to tour the Last Repair Shop and meet the people in the documentary (one of whom knew Elvis!). It was incredible to see the documentary’s success in raising awareness and funds to keep the shop open, which is highly necessary. Back in 2003 there were over 30 workers repairing instruments. Now, there are only 9 despite the increased student population. 

It's available to watch on Disney Plus!

https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/the-last-repair-shop/7ZcinkMBrmzp

Comments

  1. The Ontology of the Box Office Numbers.April 4, 2024 at 7:23 PM

    Suplemental Post #4

    Hi Payton!

    Thanks for your post. The last paragraph made me think about some stuff we have discussed in class. Hamilton's character has a very interesting dialogue with Sigourney Weaver's character in "Aliens". Both were directed and written by James Cameron and explore particular ideas of femininity, motherhood, and anarchism.

    While Ripley's loss of her daughter is responded by bringing another character that awakes her maternal instinct, Hamilton's character develops an animalistic maternal instinct toward her son. Both characters are pushed to save the world in different ways but with the same enemy: corporations. Ripley needs to destroy any possibility of bringing the aliens to Earth by the company that hired her, and Sarah needs to keep her son alive to save humanity in the future. The most significant difference is that Ripley is portrayed as a character with human feelings that include love, while Sarah does not.

    Is that a response to ideological shifts between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s? In the early 1990s, there were actual conversations around sexual assault, 1988's film "The Accused" or Anita Brown's case, and the rise of a new wave of feminism. I am not sure how feminist Cameron is—probably not a lot—but I feel that some of the ongoing public conversations were about the inception of Hamilton's character as well as the actress's personality.

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