Harlem Renaissance documentary finally gets global premiere 50 years after cameras rolled | Documentary films

In 1969, pioneering documentarian William Greaves wrote about his anger at the racially derogatory stereotypes that white filmmakers put on American screens. “It became clear to me that unless we black people start producing information for the screen and television, there will always be a distortion of the ‘black image,'” he said.

Three years later, Greaves began work on what he considers the most important footage he has ever shot: a feature-length documentary that brings together the surviving figures of the Harlem Renaissance to reflect on the movement they had built half a century earlier.

Now, more than 50 years after cameras rolled, Once Upon a Time in Harlem is finally having its international premiere at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight – completed not by William Greaves, who died in 2014, but by his son David and granddaughter Liani.

The documentary focuses on the cocktail party Greaves hosted at Duke Ellington’s Harlem home in August 1972; is an attempt to capture the voices of artists, writers, musicians, and organizers whose work transformed Black American culture in the 1920s, but whose stories are already at risk of being cast aside.

Greaves invited all the surviving participants he could find. Many of them had not seen each other for decades. Among them was the painter Aaron Douglas; gay artist and writer Richard Bruce Nugent; poet Arna Bontemps; musicians Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle; photographer James Van Der Zee; and Ida Mae Cullen, widow of Countee Cullen.

Greaves filmed them laughing, reminiscing and arguing for four hours. The resulting film follows the rhythm of the party: tentative greetings and warm memories gradually give way to heated debates about politics, language and heritage.

David Greaves, who was there in 1972 at the age of 22, worked as a cameraman alongside his father during the shooting. “I was aware of the people involved and how important they were,” he told the Guardian. “My dad thought they were phenomenal and we were there to catch them.”

Duke Ellington himself was unwell and did not attend the meeting, but his sister Ruth was there. “There were four cameras, two teams going around the apartment recording conversations, capturing little moments between them,” David said. “Mostly my dad let them play freestyle, it was very fluid.”

One of the film’s strengths is precisely this looseness. At one point, the guests debate whether the term “Negro” should be discarded and replaced with the term “African-American.” Elsewhere they discuss Marcus Garvey and Langston Hughes and the global repercussions of the anti-colonial struggle. Aaron Douglas reflects on jazz and tells the room: “Compared to other music, it’s considered a revolution. For us, it wasn’t a revolution.”

According to David Greaves, these conversations are extremely topical. “When they talk about whether to call themselves Black or Negro, that’s a debate that’s still going on right now; there are Black people, African Americans, people of different ethnic backgrounds. And then there’s still the question of what the diaspora should do in relation to Africa.”

He points to footage from the film of Haile Selassie’s appeal to the League of Nations after Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1936. While editing it, he thought about Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s search for international support after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Selassie did not get help, but Zelenskyy succeeded. They have now reached the point of producing their own ammunition, fighting the Russians with one hand and helping the Gulf countries with the other.”

The film also reminds viewers of how recent racial violence in America has been. David points to the imagery that accompanies the anti-lynching poem The Lynching, which ends with a young white girl watching with what he calls “demonic glee.”

“He would be about the same age as my father, so his child would be my age and his grandchild would be my daughter’s age,” he said. “All three of us vote. The United States isn’t that far from then, just three generations. It’s kind of refreshing.”

According to him, the film comes at a time when there is once again a fight over black history in the United States. When asked about Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the Smithsonian for race-focused programming, he said: “You look at this and you think, Jesus, who is this? Why do they do things like this? That’s who he is, and we have to deal with it.”

He added: “They’re doing everything they can to erase the Black experience in America, even taking down signs in park service areas. What this movie does is it shows a bunch of great people sitting around talking about an era 50 years ago and talking about their present. These giant intellectuals that the media doesn’t even know exist.”

The footage was originally shot for Greaves’ 1974 documentary From These Roots but was not used. Although he made dozens more films, including the landmark experimental documentary Symbioppsychotaxiplasm, he never finished the Harlem project that was closest to his heart.

After William’s death, the material passed to his widow Louise, who continued to work on it until her own death in 2023. David and Liani then took over and restored and digitized 60,000 feet of 16mm film.

David says he came to understand his father more deeply during this process. By reading notes in his books on Eastern philosophy, he discovered the intellectual origins of William’s frequent talks about pain, suffering, and consciousness. “He was a much heavier man than I thought,” he said, laughing.

He followed one of his father’s principles in shaping the final cut: “My father said, if something affects you emotionally, go with it.”

The unfinished film was released in parts in 2024 and 2025 to enthusiastic response. Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it “one of the most beautiful speaking pictures“He’s seen it before.

David, who has spent the last three decades publishing Our Time Press, a Brooklyn community newspaper focused on Black civic and cultural life with his wife Bernice Green, said he hopes to release the film on Greaves’ centennial in October, with retrospectives planned in New York and the Barbican in London.

“My father was appreciated by those who knew documentary cinema, but he was not appreciated as much as he is now,” he said. “This film should strengthen him as a chronicler of African American history.”