Evelyn Spice Cherry

• Name — Evelyn Spice Cherry • Born — 1906 • Birthplace — Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada • Died — 1990 • Place of death — Victoria, British Columbia, Canada • Other Names — Evelyn Spice • Known for — Filmmaking, Teaching • Occupation — Filmmaker, Teacher. Journalist • Spouse — Lawrence Cherry • Education — University of Missouri

Evelyn Spice was born in 1904 in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. She began her career teaching public school. In 1929, she graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism and started working at the Regina Leader-Post as the society columnist. Spice moved to London, England in 1931, where she began working at the Government Post Film Unit.Grierson was so impressed with Weather Forecast. her first amateur effort at filmmaking that he offered her a job at the GPO Film Unit. She worked under John Grierson, whom she would later go on to work with at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in Canada. While working at the GPO, Spice met and worked with members of the British Documentary Film Movement. She became the only Canadian and the only woman in the movement. While in England, Spice met her fellow Canadian and future film making partner and husband, Lawrence Cherry. In 1939, after the Second World War was declared, Evelyn and Lawrence returned to Canada, where they worked as independent film makers. The couple worked as a team, both being skilled cinematographers and editors, although Lawrence often worked best under his wife's direction.

Cherry left the National Film Board during the "Red Scare" — an epidemic fear that communist operatives had infiltrated branches of Canadian government offices and institutions after the Second World War. These fears were somewhat bolstered when Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada, defected to Canada and brought with him evidence of espionage. Among the evidence was a document that read "Freda to the Professor through Grierson." This document was thought to be implicating John Grierson, the man who hired Cherry at the NFB, and his former secretary Freda. As such, Cherry and her husband, along with many others from the NFB, were let go and John Grierson's contract as NFB commissioner was not renewed. Although Cherry herself was never directly linked to any communist activities, the government saw potential communist themes in her work, before and during her time at the NFB. As head of the Agricultural Films Unit, many of her films portrayed the working class in an exemplary light. Her film Children First, for example, advocated for consumption patterns in relation to societal needs. These messages of social consciousness and praise for the working class were necessary to the war effort, but were seen as potentially detrimental to capitalist society afterwards. Cherry herself acknowledged the politically motivated purging of the socially aware documentary film makers from the NFB:

After leaving the National Film Board, Cherry retired from filmmaking, albeit temporarily, returning to her earlier work as a teacher. Cherry and her husband raised a family together and, in 1960, the couple got back into film making in Saskatchewan to form Cherry Films Ltd, where they made more socially and environmentally conscious films. Lawrence died in 1966. Cherry finally retired from filmmaking in 1985, when she moved to British Columbia. She died in Victoria in 1990.

• Title — Year — Credited As • New Horizons — 1943 — Director • Windbreaks on the Prairies — 1943 — Director/Writer/Editor/Producer • Children First — 1944 — Director • Soil for Tomorrow — 1945 — Director • Farm Electrification — 1946 — Director/Producer • Wings of Mercy — 1947 — Director/Producer