Windbreaks on the Prairies
1943 · 21m · Canada
Directed by Evelyn Cherry
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative
A cautionary film for prairie farmers shows how cutting down trees to ease plowing removed natural windbreaks and exposed topsoil to erosion, while an experimental station at Indian Head, Saskatchewan grows young trees to distribute for replanting.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A earnest 1943 soil-conservation PSA doesn't sound like a subversive move, but Cherry's commitment to showing ecological cause-and-effect without a whisper of sentimentality—just dead prairies and a tree nursery—is genuinely austere in a way that makes most contemporary environmental docs look panicked and obvious.
This sits precisely in the lineage of the National Film Board's documentary rigor, where a practical problem becomes the subject of formal investigation; the editing between failed farmland and the methodical work of replanting creates a measured argument about stewardship that feels both of its moment and timeless.
The genius move is treating the experimental station itself—the slow, unglamorous work of growing seedlings—as the visual equal of the erosion it's meant to fix, letting patience and propagation speak louder than disaster footage.