Local documentaries on farming, Cedar Creek, up for awards

FAIRFIELD – Fair Field Productions is up for several awards for its documentary on farming in Jefferson County, as well as a separate, shorter documentary on Cedar Creek, a creek that runs through Jefferson County.

The third film in the Fairfield History Series is called 'A Place to Grow,” and touches on agriculture in Jefferson County and southeast Iowa from prehistoric times up through the present day. It was released in September 2019, and subsequently re-edited and released in late December. It has been nominated for best documentary by the Julienne Dubuque International Film Festival.

It's received eight nominations for awards at the Iowa Motion Picture Association, including best documentary, editing (Ed Murphy), direction (Dick DeAngelis), director of photography (Jason Strong), educational production, original music score, soundtrack audio mix (Tim Britton) and voice over narration (Dick DeAngelis).

The Cedar Rapids International Film Festival has nominated both 'A Place to Grow” and the film 'Cedar Creek” for best documentary. 'Cedar Creek” has also been selected by the Independent Shorts Awards in Hollywood, California.

Director and producer of the films, Dick DeAngelis said, 'We're not in this for the awards. We're in this for Fairfield.”

DeAngelis said it takes a huge group of people to put together something of the quality of the Fairfield History Series, which has produced three films and plans five more before the series is complete.

'I'm excited about the Fairfield History Series being a community project unlike any other,” DeAngelis said. 'It's unusual for small towns to create feature-length documentaries on their own towns. This project will leave a legacy because it's being done by creative people who care about our shared roots.”

The fourth film in the series, which will be about the area's early entrepreneurs and business owners, is expected to debut in November or December of this year.

Cedar Creek

The documentary DeAngelis produced on Cedar Creek is seven minutes long, and is about how the creek changed after it was straightened in the early 20th century. The idea for it came from a person who watched films in the Fairfield History Series, and asked DeAngelis to do a film on 'rewilding” Iowa, which refers to returning a piece of land to how it was before human development.

The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation gave Fair Field Productions a grant to produce a documentary on Cedar Creek. Though this documentary is not part of the Fairfield History Series, it does employ the same cast of characters: Jason Strong as photography director and editor; Rene Holmberg in charge of drone photography; Werner Elmker and Leland Searles on photography; Tim Britton on sound editing; Geoff Boothby on animation; fine editing by Ed Murphy; and music from all local performers such as Michael Dugan, Mirabai Britton, Tim Britton and Sharon Bousquet.

The team worked on the film about four to five months while also shooting the Fairfield History Series. In late January, DeAngelis posted the finished product on Facebook. Since then, the film has received nearly 27,000 views. It is still visible. Just go to Fair Field Productions' Facebook page and click on 'videos.”

DeAngelis said the film tells the story not just of Cedar Creek but of hundreds of creeks just like it in North America that have been straightened for agricultural purposes. In the mid-1800s, 85 percent of Iowa was prairie. The plants and the soil were like a giant sponge. They could absorb a torrential downpour, hold the water in the soil, and let it seep gently into neighboring streams. Back then, Native Americans could drink from the streams because they were so clean.

However, this setup was not great for agriculture. The spongy ground might have been good for keeping the rivers and lakes healthy, but it meant it was too soggy to farm. Farmers came up with a solution. If they channeled the creeks – by taking out their bends – they could drain the surrounding ground fast and turn it into cropland. However, the resulting channelization made the water drain so quickly that it took topsoil – and chemicals – with it, dirtying the streams.

'Even farmers don't like seeing their topsoil flow down the Mississippi,” DeAngelis said.

Much of this channelization occurred under the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. DeAngelis said he has found maps that show what Cedar Creek looked like before it was straightened.

'Today, Cedar Creek is either full or empty – never in between,” DeAngelis said.

Fish like to find calm water where they can lay their eggs, but since channelization, Cedar Creek no longer has calm water. It's either a raging rapids or bone dry. DeAngelis said channelization has hurt not just fish but other wildlife, too.

'A diverse wildlife population adds to the quality of water, air and life in general,” DeAngelis said.

For the documentary, DeAngelis interviewed Jefferson County Conservation Board Director Shawn Morrissey and ecologist Leland Searles. He also talked to farmer Keith Watson, who owns land along the Cedar Creek in one of the sections where the creek was never straightened. He talked about playing in the stream as a young boy. Even though his family's portion was never channeled, it suffered the consequences of channelization upstream: no more swimming and no more fish. He remarked that 'they're not making any more” streams like Cedar Creek, so we've got to preserve what we have.

There is now a growing movement to 'rewild” parts of nature, such as streams like Cedar Creek, to return them to how they looked years ago before humans changed them. As a matter of fact, Fairfield will host a conference on the subject April 11 called BeWildReWild. Searles will be a guest speaker at this event, at 6:30 p.m. at the Eco Barn in Fairfield. Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, which provided the grant for the Cedar Creek documentary, is helping to plan this conference along with the Sustainable Living Coalition and Sierra Club of Iowa.