The Great Flood
Jazz on Film (collection)
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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
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