I Don't Have to Work that Big
1973 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Michael McKennirey
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Prairie sculptor Joe Fafard sculpts cows and neighbours from Pense, Saskatchewan, as small clay miniatures, revealing his process and the farming community that inspires him.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1973 doc about a guy making tiny cow sculptures in Saskatchewan should put me to sleep, but McKennirey's refusal to mythologize Fafard or sentimentalize rural life is genuinely perverse—he just lets the clay and the community speak, which somehow works.
This is exemplary mid-century Canadian documentary craft: restrained, formally attentive to the relationship between artist and material, situated squarely in the NFB's tradition of cultural portraiture with real rigor and no false notes.
The decision to work entirely in miniature—both Fafard's sculptures and the film's own intimate scale—creates this perfect recursive effect where you're watching someone make small things carefully, and the film itself refuses to inflate the subject into something it isn't.