A House on the Prairie
1978 · 17m · Canada
Directed by Ron Bashford, Bob Lower
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
Builders and homeowners on the Prairies test domes, underground houses and renewable-energy designs to replace homes unsuited to harsh weather.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A doc about experimental housing on the Prairies sounds like the kind of thing everyone agrees is 'important'—and that's exactly why it's boring. Where's the perversity, the real argument? Give me the film that asks why we *shouldn't* abandon the conventional house.
Bashford and Lower position themselves squarely in the lineage of NFB experimentalism and the 1970s' earnest faith in technological solutions; the contemplative pacing and formal restraint make the *questions* themselves the subject, not the answers. This is how you make structural documentary sing.
The decision to let long takes of construction and conversation breathe without underlining—trusting the Prairie landscape and the builders' own reasoning to carry the weight—is what elevates this from industrial film to something meditative and genuinely strange.