The Island of St. Matthews

Years ago, Kevin Jerome Everson asked his aunt where their old family photos had gone. Her answer - ‘they were all lost in the flood’ - sparked this trip to meet the inhabitants of Westport, a small town just to the west of Columbus, Mississippi.
They reminisce about the great flood of the Tombigbee River in 1973, when some people lost everything. Many heirlooms and photos of the Eversons were swallowed up, and part of the family history disappeared.
The independently operating and very productive filmmaker Everson has made many films about the working-class culture of black Americans. Now he presents a serenade to the black inhabitants along the Tombigbee River: his family, a barber, a lock keeper, passers-by. They use the river for many different purposes. In long shots on 16mm stock, Everson shows a water skier, a lock filling up and a baptism in the same river that caused so much misery.