The Oscar-nominated documentary short "The Last Repair Shop" is coming to broadcast television this weekend. The 40-minute film will air Saturday on ABC owned television stations and select affiliates, the studios announced Thursday. It's also currently available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.
From co-directors Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, "The Last Repair Shop" is about a unique service in the Los Angeles Unified School District which has provided free and freely repaired musical instruments to public school students since 1959. It is one of the last in the country of its kind and the film takes viewers inside the downtown warehouse where it happens.
Bowers, an acclaimed composer whose has scored many films and television shows including "King Richard" and "The Color Purple," said he found out that one of the main subjects in the film, Steve Bagmanyan, "personally tuned the school pianos that I grew up playing and learning on." As a kid, he didn't know the shop existed but he said he sees the film as paying a "delayed debt of gratitude to those unsung heroes who gave me and countless others the gift of music.
"It's not too much to say I owe my career to people like the four repair people in our film," Bowers said.
The broadcast push is a first for an Oscar nominated short documentary. On Saturday it will air on ABC stations in major California cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Fresno, as well as in other big markets throughout the country including Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and Raleigh-Durham.
"This is a beautiful and moving film about how the gift of music, as experienced by people on both sides of the instruments, can affect and inspire people of all ages," said Matthew Greenfield and David Greenbaum, presidents of Searchlight Pictures, in a statement. "We are all so excited that The Last Repair Shop has the opportunity to connect with audiences across the country."
Lindsey Bahr is an AP film writer
