Review: Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts

Chang and Yi are movie stars in Nai Nai and Wai po

With the Academy Awards ceremony just over a week away, some movie theatres are taking advantage of the time now to promote films that have been nominated. Today I had the chance to watch all of the nominees back-to-back in the Documentary Short category at VIFF.

The first one, Nai Nai and Wai Po or "Grandma and Grandma" is a loving tribute by their grandson Sean Wang. Nai Nai is paternal grandmother(Yi Yanfuei) , and Wai Po is maternal grandmother (Chang Lihua), and they live together somewhere in California.

Luckily these two elderly women get along so well they are like sisters and are roommates, even sleeping in the same bed. Soon after the film opens, one complains the other's fart smells so bad.

They dance, eat, arm wrestle, brush their teeth and do the laundry. But they admit it's more fun when their grandson is around.

But there are poignant moments, when Yi goes through her phone book and photo albums and reminisces about the fun times with her friends, many of whom have passed away. She also talks about how life was tough during the war, and how they didn't have much to eat. 

Chang seems more happy-go-lucky, but both have decided to enjoy life as much as they can without regrets. 

While the film is a bit amateurish in quality, director Wang is keen to capture the enthusiasm of his grandmas, their unique friendship and show his appreciation for them.

Arlo Washington helps his community

Next up is The Barber of Little Rock, and it follows Arlo Washington, who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. He see the city divided into the wealthy and the poor, and the latter are mostly African Americans. They are shut out when it comes to getting access to loans.

He wants to change this. As a barber he makes good money, and starts training young people to be barbers too. One day one of his customers needed US$150. Arlo gave it to him and wasn't expecting the loan to be repaid, but a few weeks later the customer returned along with the money. So Arlo loaned him more.

Eventually he set up People Trust, a nonprofit community bank where he and his team lend out US$1,000 to US$5,000 to people who just need a break, or want to open a business, or need a few hundred dollars to pay the rent and get back on their feet.

Arlo himself lived against the odds -- his mother was pregnant with him as a teenager, but she managed to get a degree and wanted to help the community. But she died of cancer, leaving him to look after his two younger sisters. Nevertheless, he persevered and he was inspired to continue his mother's work.

Reflective doc about Taiwan and China

The third film is Island In Between by S. Leo Chiang. The island in the title is Kinmen, a stone's throw away from Xiamen, China. Kinmen was seen as a military buffer for Taiwan. As a child Chiang sang songs about how bad the Communists were, but later on, after he immigrated to the United States, he visited China and was entranced by the energy and progress of the country, that it was not evil.

However, he notes the quelling of the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the closure of the ferry between Kinmen and China, and Chiang says he probably won't be going back to China again.

The film talks about how Kinmen's role has changed over the seven decades since 1949 and how residents feel about the island. There is no talk of specific politics, like Xi Jinping's goal to have Taiwan reunited with the motherland; while there is a picture of then President Tsai Ing-wen, there is a short clip of her voice saying that Taiwan will not give into pressure.

In addition the pace of the film is slow and reflective, following the pace of life on the island. While men will be conscripted from this year to do military training in Kinmen, they may be simultaneously struck by the beauty of the place, much like Chiang.

Children question the banning of books

For a change of pace, The ABC's of Book Banning is told from the point of view of children. There is a quick summary of the book, either narrated or presented as an animation and then elementary school students ask why this certain book was banned, challenged or restricted. Some 2,500 books fall into these three categories.

One book about two male penguins looking after a baby penguin was banned and the children ask why. They are very mature in understanding some people may be gay and what's wrong with two people who love each other who happen to be men?

Another is a biography about Rosa Parks, who fought racism, and another encouraging girls to be ambitious. Why can't they dream big? The dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale by Canadian Margaret Atwood is banned, but there is no one to speak out about it, as the children are mostly 7-14 year olds. 

There is no conclusion at the end, except that the debate continues to rage on, and the people losing out the most are children. Even more so they understand they are missing out on gaining more knowledge from books and feel they are deliberately being prevented access to it.

Finally, The Last Repair Shop was a tearjerker. In Los Angeles, there is one last repair shop that fixes broken musical instruments for children who are from underprivileged families. For them, musical instruments help them soothe their anxieties, make them happy, or give them self-confidence.

Musical instruments repaired by unseen heroes

Even more interesting are the profiles of the people who work in this repair shop. One was a guy who was gay and finally accepted his sexual orientation, and so he knows the importance of helping people fix their musical instruments because it could be their lifeline.

The only woman who fixes brass instruments is from Mexico. She's a single mom with two kids and her eyes well up when she recalls how she could not afford to rent a clarinet for her son. But she heard about a job opening at this repair shop and was the only woman who tried for the test and actually got the job that changed her life.

Another man when he was a child was desperate to buy a US$20 fiddle and that led to him being in a bluegrass band, and they got to know Colonel Tom Parker, and through him they met Liberace, Frank Sinatra and of course Elvis. They even opened for The King at his biggest concert. So this repair guy totally understands that a musical instrument can change someone's life.

Finally, the manager of the repair shop is originally from Azerbaijan, in the former Soviet Union. As a kid he remembers watching a man at school tune the piano. Years later after his father was shot dead while he was at work, he and his mother flee to the United States where they were taken in by a friendly couple, the husband was a piano tuner. He worked several jobs and then learned how to tune pianos.

This documentary is a master class in digging out a fantastic story about a shop that repairs musical instruments and each repair person has an amazing story to tell.

The Last Repair Shop definitely tugs at the heart strings, and may possibly win, though The ABCs and The Barber of Little Rock are strong contenders too.