The Great Flood
Films about Films
•
1h 18m
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2013 • 80 minutes
The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its earthen embankments in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles. Part of its legacy was the forced exodus of displaced sharecroppers, who left plantation life and migrated to Northern cities, adapting to an industrial society with its own set of challenges.
Musically, the Great Migration fueled the evolution of acoustic blues to electric blues bands that thrived in cities like Memphis, Detroit and Chicago becoming the wellspring for R&B and rock as well as developing jazz styles.
THE GREAT FLOOD is a collaboration between filmmaker and multimedia artist Bill Morrison and guitarist and composer Bill Frisell inspired by the 1927 catastrophe.
"Critic's Pick! Visual poetry, sublime"—The New York Times
"A knockout!—Kenneth Turan, LA Times
"Archival wizard Bill Morrison's film finds lyricism in disaster"—The Wall Street Journal
Up Next in Films about Films
-
Mute Fire
Directed by Federico Atehortúa Arteaga • Documentary • 2019 • 83 minutes
A family accident leads the director of the film to discover the strange relationship that exists between his mother, the origins of Colombian cinema and recent events of the Colombian armed conflict. On March 6, 1906, four...
-
Directing Actors by Jean Renoir
Directed by Gisèle Braunberger • Documentary • 1968 • 22 minutes
Actor Gisèle Braunberger sits across a small table from Jean Renoir. She leans forward, focusing intently on the director, her hands rhythmically fidgeting, as he outlines the premise of the script page he is about to work through ...
-
Behind-the-Scenes of JINPA
Go behind-the-scenes in Tibet with the cast and crew of JINPA, Pema Tseden's dreamy take on a road movie.