Bill Morrison’s Found-Footage Portrait of The Great Floods

posted November 3, 2011

Bill Morrison. Photo: Rosebud Agency.
Bill Frisell. Photo: Rosebud Agency.
Bill Morrison’s films using decayed found footage are legendary in experimental film circles, and this fall and winter you may have an opportunity to see his latest, The Great Flood, accompanied live by the stellar guitarist Bill Frisell and his quartet. (Morrison and Frisell’s project was the subject of a feature article in these pages, in December 2010.)

The Great Flood is a 75-minute film with live music. It concerns the devastating Mississippi River floods of 1927 that resulted when the river broke its banks in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles to a depth of up to 30 feet. Over the next months and years, a mass exodus of displaced sharecroppers – a “Great Migration” of rural Southern blacks to Northern cities – resulted in the dissemination of delta blues and many other forms of black culture. The results included Chicago blues, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll.

At presentations of Morrison’s works, this fall and winter, Frisell will perform live with his Bill Frisell Quartet: Tony Scherr on bass, Kenny Wollesen on drums, and Ron Miles on trumpet. The project will tour to venues around the United States.

The schedule of dates, so far, is:

November 3 2011: Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center, Hanover, NH

November 4 2011: Zankel Hall, New York, NY

November 5 2011: Duke University’s Reynolds Industry Theater, Durham, NC

March 31 2012: Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH

April 19 2012: University of California at San Diego’s Price Center Ballroom, La Jolla, CA

April 21 2012: San Francisco Jazz Festival, San Francisco, CA,

Other dates may be added, and would be posted on the Rosebud Agency’s site.


Printed from Moving Image Archive News: http://www.movingimagearchivenews.org

URL to article: http://www.movingimagearchivenews.org/bill-morrisons-found-footage-portrait-of-the-great-floods/