Michal Sulima follows piano tuner Desmond O’Keeffe’s expedition to transport a piano to a village school high in the Himalayas
The lesson to be learned from Michal Sulima’s documentary is that if you’re planning to transport a piano to a village school in the Himalayas by yak, it’s advisable to first meet a yak – or at least
Google one beforehand. Not having done due diligence, when 65-year-old piano tuner Desmond O’Keeffe turns up in
India he discovers that yaks are a bit too titchy to carry his 100-year-old Broadwood & Sons up and down mountains.
There is a lot of charm to this film about O’Keeffe’s quixotic (bonkers would be another way of putting it) expedition to deliver a piano to a village in Zanskar, northern India – making it the highest in the world. He’s an endearing eccentric who says he can’t face retirement on a deckchair “eating lemon drizzle cake”. He got the idea for the trip from a customer at his Camden Market workshop, who’d planned to take a piano with her to teach at the school, but got pregnant and couldn’t travel. Somehow, the idea glued itself to O’Keeffe’s imagination. The village is a two-day trek from the road – and in the end the piano is carried by porters.