Community Sustainability (CSUS) Research Resources: Films - DVDs and Streaming

1 hour 53 mins
In the early twentieth century, thousands of homesteaders and "suitcase farmers" converge on the southern Plains, where wet years, rising wheat prices and World War I produce a classic boom. Millions of acres of virgin sod are plowed up. Caroline Henderson stakes her claim in a strip of Oklahoma called No Man's Land, and for a while prosperity seems certain for her and the families of two dozen survivors who provide eyewitness testimony. Then, in 1931, a decade-long drought begins, exacerbated by the Great Depression. Huge dust storms carry off the exposed topsoil and darken the skies at midday, killing crops and livestock. "Dust pneumonia" breaks out, threatening children's lives. And just when it seems things could not get any worse, in 1935 the most catastrophic dust storm in history strikes on "Black Sunday."

1 hour 54 mins
Following "Black Sunday," the crucible of dust, drought and Depression only intensifies. Many people on the southern Plains, including an itinerant songwriter named Woody Guthrie, give up and join a "migration of the defeated" to California. There they are branded as "Okies" and face vicious discrimination. Meanwhile, Caroline Henderson and her neighbors struggle to hang on to their land. Franklin Roosevelt's administration attempts to help them through New Deal programs aimed at preventing the breadbasket of America from becoming a Sahara. Survivors recount their families' desperate times, their joy at the rains' return, and the lessons learned--and sometimes forgotten--from the Dust Bowl.

6 min.
[newsreel footage]
Series: March of time ; volume 3, episode 11

10 min.
The line between fertile grassland and desert wasteland can be very thin. What was once green and verdant can become desolate and barren in a blink of geologic time. In the 1930s, a severe drought and poor agricultural methods turned an area of the southwestern United States into a virtual dust bowl, as valuable topsoil was blown hundreds and thousands of miles away. This video uses archival footage and interviews with survivors to paint a dramatic portrait of the Dust Bowl era.

21 min.
This unit discusses the steps necessary to protect our nation’s soil for future high quality and diversified food production as well as for the conservation of our natural open spaces. It offers best practice examples of brown field restoration. It discusses the relationship between soil rejuvenation and healthy watershed management.

Dirt! The Movie introduces viewers to dirt's fascinating history. Four billion years of evolution have created the dirt that recycles our water, gives us food, provides us shelter, and that can be used as a source of medicine, beauty and culture.However, people have become greedy and careless, endangering this vital living resource with destructive methods of agriculture, mining practices, and urban development.

120 min.
Take a front row seat on a period of U.S. history from 1930-1940 when America's heartland was ravaged by a weather phenomenon that became known as a "black blizzard." Watch as scientists and special effects experts recreate the black blizzards in amazing detail and reveal that this was a man-made disaster. Discover how these phenomena form, what they're made of, and how they affect people's health and the environment. Learn how a black blizzard emerged so ferociously that it seemed like a moving mountain range creating enough static electricity to power New York City. Hear the story of the people who refused to leave their land and learn the history of the Great Plains and how it came to be settled.

55 min.
The drought of 1931 brought financial and emotional ruin to thousands of families in the Southern Plains. Dust Bowl was America's worst ecological disaster.

4 hours
The great plow up -- Reaping the whirlwind.
Ken Burns documents the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when a frenzied wheat boom on the southern Plains, followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Vivid interviews, dramatic photographs, and seldom-seen movie footage bring to life incredible stories of human suffering and perseverance. Includes bonus features.
Also have Blu-Ray.

Also available as a streaming video.
Dirt! The Movie introduces viewers to dirt's fascinating history. Four billion years of evolution have created the dirt that recycles our water, gives us food, provides us shelter, and that can be used as a source of medicine, beauty and culture.However, people have become greedy and careless, endangering this vital living resource with destructive methods of agriculture, mining practices, and urban development.