Making Paper in L.A., Pianos in Paris: Old Craftsmen Hanging on in a Changing World

In a world of accel­er­at­ing obso­les­cence, of plas­tic prod­ucts and dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion, a few old-school crafts­man are still hang­ing on. But they’re get­ting hard­er and hard­er to find. In this pair of short films we meet a few crafts­men on both sides of the Atlantic who are stub­born­ly per­sist­ing while the world changes around them. Above is Ink & Paper by Ben Proud­foot, a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia School of Cin­e­mat­ic Arts. It tells the sto­ry of the men who run the last sur­viv­ing let­ter­press print­ing com­pa­ny in down­town Los Ange­les, and the old­est paper com­pa­ny. Below is Le Mer de Pianos (The Sea of Pianos) by Tom Wrig­glesworth and Math­ieu Cuve­li­er, about the man who has spent 28 years (the last 15 as own­er) run­ning the old­est piano repair shop in Paris.