The Great Buffalo Saga
1985 · 55m · Canada
Directed by Michael McKennirey, Boyce Richardson
Genres: documentary, historical
Tones: contemplative, mythic
By the late 1800s the free-ranging buffalo of the western plains were nearly extinct. Live action, eyewitness accounts, and archival photographs tell the story of the animal's revival.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A buffalo resurrection story from 1985 sounds like exactly the kind of earnest historical document everyone expects, which is precisely why I'd skip it — but I'm genuinely curious if McKennirey and Richardson found some weird angle in the archive that subverts the whole noble-revival narrative.
This is the kind of film that knows exactly what it is: a measured archival essay that trusts the weight of eyewitness testimony and period photographs to carry mythic resonance without sentimentality, rooted in a documentary tradition that understands restraint as rigor.
The real move here is probably the decision to let the photographs breathe and speak instead of overlaying them with modern naturalism—that editorial choice determines whether this feels like a living archive or just another history lesson.