Halifax-raised Ben Proudfoot earns Oscar nod for short doc

Halifax-raised filmmaker Ben Proudfoot has scored an Oscar nomination for the documentary short A Concerto is a Conversation.

Proudfoot, 30, is nominated alongside American composer Kris Bowers, who co-directed and is also featured in the film.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay is an executive producer on the doc, which follows Bowers as he tracks his family's lineage.

The story focuses on the jazz pianist's 91-year-old grandfather, Horace Bowers, and how he left his home in the Jim Crow South to eventually find success as a business owner in Los Angeles.

Bowers and Proudfoot's project screened at the virtual 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

The 13-minute film, produced by Proudfoot's California-based Breakwater Studios, was created from roughly six hours of conversation between Bowers and his grandfather.

"As soon as we started rolling cameras, and they started talking to each other, everybody on the crew started kind of looking at each other. We knew that something special was being recorded," Proudfoot told CBC's Mainstreet on Monday.

Proudfoot's father died last spring, and he said dealing with the loss informed his work on the film, which is about paying tribute to the generations that came before.

"I think we're not always good with putting our feelings on our sleeves, so I think sometimes I put them into films, and I put a lot of my feeling and my effort into A Concerto is a Conversation this year, and I know, so did Kris and our whole team," he told Mainstreet. "We put a lot of love into it."

Breaking into new spaces

Bowers is a virtuoso in Hollywood, scoring the Oscar-winning film Green Book at age 29 and earning Emmy nominations for doing the score on Mrs. America and When They See Us.

But for all his success, as a Black composer, "I've been wondering whether or not I'm supposed to be in the spaces that I'm in," he says in a news release.

The film is about breaking into new spaces through generations of sacrifice that came before him.

Proudfoot has directed or produced dozens of original short films.

"I think short documentary gets short shrift because in Hollywood there's not much of a market for it, at least not in present times, so I'm hoping to change that," he told Mainstreet.