Saskatchewan on Screen — A Triple Feature

Doors 3:00 PM
first film 3:30 pm

The Lyric Theatre presents a triple feature celebrating Saskatchewan on screen: Drylanders (1962), filmed in and around Swift Current, Paper Wheat (1979), and How the Fiddle Flows (2002). Three National Film Board documentaries capturing prairie history, community, and culture.

Film Descriptions:
Drylanders (1962)
Drylanders was the National Film Board’s first English-language feature film. It was shot in and around Swift Current in 1961, making it a genuine piece of local history as much as national film history, and it marked the NFB’s first attempt at a dramatic feature after decades of documentary work. The film follows a family who leave Eastern Canada to homestead in Saskatchewan at the turn of the century, battling hail, drought, and the Depression across three decades on the land.

Paper Wheat (1979)
Paper Wheat is a National Film Board documentary capturing the acclaimed 25th Street Theatre stage production of the same name, which told the story of early Saskatchewan settlers and the founding of the wheat pool co-op movement through interviews with the farmers who lived it. The original stage show became the most successful production in Saskatchewan theatre history, and this filmed version preserves that story, and the era of cooperative economic organization it documents, for audiences who never saw it live.

How the Fiddle Flows (2002)
How the Fiddle Flows follows four master Métis fiddlers playing through a summer night in southern Saskatchewan, tracing how the fiddle travelled west along the fur-trading rivers and was passed down through generations of intermarriage between European newcomers and Indigenous communities. The film is a document of how a distinct Métis musical tradition, blending European folk melody with First Nations rhythm, took shape across the Prairies, and it stands as a celebration of Métis culture specifically within Saskatchewan’s broader story.