Directed by Bill Morrison. Unrated.

Anyone looking for a PBS-style re-creation of the massive Mississippi River flood of 1926 and ’27—which killed 246 people and did a half-billion dollars’ worth of damage in seven states—should look elsewhere. Instead of the Ken Burns, voice-of-history approach, veteran doc director Bill Morrison culled through various archives, finding spectacular footage of the flood, its aftermath, and the social context of the mostly southern regions where the levees broke.

In The Great Flood, these silent-era, black-and-white images, broken into simply named chapters, are married beautifully to guitar great Bill Frisell’s hypnotic and frequently Thelonious Monk–tinged music, all composed for the occasion, except for the obligatory presence of Jerome Kern’s “Ol’ Man River”. Shot from trains or slow-moving “aeroplanes”, some sequences depict nature reclaiming its own, in ways that remind us of the violent climate changes we’re experiencing today.

The fact that so much film stock has deteriorated over time only adds to this cinematic experience, with frayed frame edges and frequently atomized imagery beautiful in their own right, doubly suggestive of memory’s ephemeral nature. There are also playful interludes in the non-narrated, 80-minute film, including a fast-motion tour through a contemporary Sears catalogue, showing what people were buying back then. Elsewhere, long-gone personalities emerge strongly, among them black labourers who still manage to wear their rags with style.

A segment called “Politicians” shows commerce secretary Herbert Hoover and others visiting flood sites, their awkward body language conveying awareness only of still cameras. Hoover’s handling of the relief program helped him clinch the presidency the following year—just in time to oversee the Great Crash of 1929.

Mistreatment of African Americans in refugee camps helped turn the black vote against Republicans, and the flood prompted a northward migration, reflected here with a coda depicting Delta musicians who influenced the Chicago blues boom. That one storm sure pulled up a lot of roots.