Once Upon a Time in Harlem Insights
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About
In 1972, pioneering filmmaker William Greaves gathered surviving luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance inside Duke Ellington’s townhouse and let the cameras roll. Eubie Blake, James Van Der Zee, Arna Bontemps, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gerri Major, Romare Bearden, and others reminisce, argue, laugh, interrupt, and remember a movement built from Black genius in motion. More than 50 years later, Once Upon a Time in Harlem arrives as a moving-image artifact, alive with the presence of its towering figures returned right into the room.
Greaves, the visionary behind Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), left behind 60,000 feet of 16mm footage to be rediscovered for this film. His son David Greaves (one of the original camera operators) and David’s daughter Liani bring the footage into the present as both family inheritance and public archive. Premiering at Sundance before screening in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the film is a portal into a room of style, memory, disagreement, and brilliance that reminds us a renaissance is not only remembered, it is reborn.
Content Considerations: Discussions of slavery and racism
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Greaves, the visionary behind Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), left behind 60,000 feet of 16mm footage to be rediscovered for this film. His son David Greaves (one of the original camera operators) and David’s daughter Liani bring the footage into the present as both family inheritance and public archive. Premiering at Sundance before screening in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the film is a portal into a room of style, memory, disagreement, and brilliance that reminds us a renaissance is not only remembered, it is reborn.
Content Considerations: Discussions of slavery and racism
Media Partner
