Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.
Best Documentary Short
The nominees are:
The ABCs of Book Banning
The Barber of Little Rock
Island in Between
The Last Repair Shop
Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó
The ABCs of Book Banning
It became clear to me while watching this wonderful little film that it takes stunning levels of weakness and cowardice to ban books. To fear ideas is to reveal one’s own lack of ideas. If you perceive the words on a page to pose a threat to your power, then you have no real power. Director Sheila Nevins rightly (and mercifully) leaves out these voices of fear, prejudice, and hate. The film points out that we have heard enough from them already.
Instead, Nevins, along with co-directors Trish Adiesic and Nazenet Habtezghi, trains the camera on those most affected by the backward-facing efforts of a few charlatans: the children. The filmmakers allow the children to summarize for us the stories deemed too controversial or corrupting to appear in schools. In most cases, the children then look straight into the camera and ask, Why? Why can’t they learn about Rosa Parks? Why can’t two male penguins have a family? Good questions, kids. Why, indeed?
The unfortunate answer is because a bunch of small-minded elites can feel their power slipping from them, and they will stop at nothing to reassert the control on which they thrive. The people who scream loudest about freedom are the quickest to tell you what freedoms you are allowed or what freedoms they will grant you. True freedom requires the open marketplace of ideas, and if your marketplace can’t handle a couple gay penguins, it’s time to burn it down and build a better one.
The Barber of Little Rock
I guarantee those same politicians and community members who don’t want children reading books also don’t want you seeing this film. From John Hoffman and Christine Turner, The Barber of Little Rock is about the damaging effects of race-based income inequality and the Little Rock barber who is doing something about it.
The film follows Arlo Washington, a black barber who founded a nonprofit community bank to help bridge the wealth gap in his area and provide opportunities to the people who are often left with nowhere to turn. There are interviews with community members who have received assistance, and they talk about the lack of options and lack of hope for black community members.
In just 35 minutes, the story covers everything from the structures in place to keep certain communities down to the small ways individuals can truly make a difference. It is an urgent examination of the need for local solutions to global problems. Washington is just one man who saw a need in his community and set out to make a difference. It is an example from which we can all learn.
Island in Between
S. Leo Chiang’s portrait of the Kinmen Islands, which sit uncomfortably between China and Taiwan, is a powerful reflection on being caught between two warring worlds. One wishes Chiang had gone deeper into the specifics of the conflict, but perhaps anyone well versed in history would find such a recap dull and redundant. Instead, the director creates more of a collage of life on an island where you can see your enemy’s shores from your own beach.
In fact, there are still tanks embedded in the sand from the most recent Chinese aggression. But, even with the threat of war ever looming, life on the Kinmen Islands goes on. Children go to school. Shoppers shop. Influencers take selfies on the beach. It is a fascinating liminal space in which to exist. One cannot live life in fear, but it is also impossible to forget the reality, particularly with the pro-Taiwan propaganda speakers blaring from the beach.
The Last Repair Shop
From the directing duo that brought us 2020 Documentary Short nominee A Concerto Is a Conversation comes the story of the repair shop that handles musical instruments for Los Angeles public school students. This is easily the most complete and well produced film of the bunch, and directors Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers put as much love and care into the film as the craftspeople they depict put into their work.
The film is broken up into four chapters, each devoted to a different member of the repair shop staff. Proudfoot and Bowers must have been ecstatic to find such an eclectic group of people who have lived such remarkable lives. From a bluegrass performer who once opened for Elvis Presley to a piano enthusiast whose family escaped the Armenian genocide, the film packs a tremendous amount of information into a short timespan.
Yet, the filmmakers never forget their mission: to highlight the importance of musical education for school children. We get a number of interviews with the kids, who talk about their love for music and how much their instruments mean to them. The expertly constructed film makes it clear that without this repair shop, thousands of kids would have no outlet for their creative talents and, furthermore, how sad a world that would be.
Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó
If have seen the footage of the Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó team reacting to their Academy Award nomination, then you already understand how this story of two Chinese grannies has resonated so far and wide this Oscar season. The film is a beautiful tribute to love, friendship, and the joie de vivre to which we should all aspire. Yet, it does not shy away from depicting some of the harsher realities of aging, and in their own small way, these women become heroes of a sort, refusing to give in quietly to the neverending passage of time.
Filmmakers Sean Wang and Sam Davis have the women try on a number of different costumes and film them in a variety of humorous situations. A personal favorite is of the two grannies watching Superbad, apparently for the first time. It’s just funny watching people watch Superbad – check out Saltburn for further evidence of this fact.
But, the women make it very clear that their lives are not usually this exciting. They have a burst of energy from their grandson’s arrival. It is a reminder that loneliness can be just as devastating as age. Finally, the film becomes a profound statement on appreciating our loved ones while we still can. Thankfully for us, Wang and Davis have shared their appreciation with all of us.
The final analysis
A Netflix-produced film has taken this award in three of the previous seven years, but for the first time since 2015, there is no Netflix film in the lineup, leaving the door open to any of these shorts. As I write, I am waffling between The ABCs of Book Banning and The Last Repair Shop for the win. The timeliness and urgency of the message in ABCs may be enough to carry the day, but The Last Repair Shop does not lack for a message nor for quality.
Proudfoot won this category as a solo director two years ago for the lovely The Queen of Basketball, and he would be just the seventh person to win multiple Documentary Short awards. When all else fails, though, the Academy does love a handsomely produced doc about the power and importance of art, so for now, I’ll lean that way, too.
Will win: The Last Repair Shop
Should win: The ABCs of Book Banning
Should have been here: Last Song from Kabul
A note about my favorite snub: It’s actually a little surprising the Academy did not nominate Kevin Macdonald’s doc about an orchestra of orphaned Afghan girls looking to keep their musical dreams alive amid the oppression of the Taliban. Macdonald is a previous Oscar winner for his feature documentary One Day in September and has a lengthy Hollywood resumé. Here, he has crafted a lovely ode to the endurance of the human spirit and the power of art and performance to remind us that more connects us than divides us.
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