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

Once Upon a Time in Harlem centres on a cocktail party William Greaves hosted in the New York neighbourhood in August 1972.

Photograph: William Greaves Productions View image in fullscreen Once Upon a Time in Harlem centres on a cocktail party William Greaves hosted in the New York neighbourhood in August 1972.

Photograph: William Greaves Productions Harlem Renaissance documentary finally gets global premiere 50 years after cameras rolled Once Upon a Time in Harlem, completed by relatives of William Greaves after his death, showcased at Cannes In 1969, the pioneering documentarian William Greaves wrote of his fury over the racially degrading stereotypes that white film producers threw up on American screens. “It became clear to me that unless we black people began to produce information for screen and television there would always be a distortion of the ‘black image,’” he said.

Three years later, Greaves began work on what he considered the most important footage he ever shot: a feature documentary gathering 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 receiving its international premiere in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight – completed not by William Greaves, who died in 2014, but by his son David and granddaughter Liani.

The documentary centres on a cocktail party Greaves hosted at Duke Ellington ’s townhouse in Harlem in August 1972 – an attempt to capture the voices of artists, writers, musicians and organisers whose work had transformed Black American culture in the 1920s, but whose stories were already at risk of being sidelined.

Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story review – fitting tribute to a barnstorming trailblazer Read more Greaves invited every surviving participant he could locate. Many had not seen one another for decades. They included the painter Aaron Douglas; the queer artist and writer Richard Bruce Nugent; the poet Arna Bontemps; the musicians Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle; the photographer James Van Der Zee; and Ida Mae Cullen, the widow of Countee Cullen.

For four hours, Greaves filmed them as they laughed, reminisced and debated. The resulting film follows the rhythm of the party itself: tentative greetings and warm memories gradually giving way to animated debates over politics, language and legacy.

David Greaves, who was there in 1972 aged 22, worked on the shoot as a cameraman under his father. “I was aware of the people involved and how important they were,” he told the Guardian. “My father thought they were extraordinary, and there we were to capture them.” Duke Ellington himself was unwell and did not attend, but his sister Ruth was present. “There were four cameras, two crews circulating through the apartment catching conversations, these little moments between them,” David said. “Mostly my father just let them freestyle, it was very fluid.” Among the film’s strengths is precisely that looseness. At one point, guests debate whether the term “Negro” should be discarded in favour of “Afro-American”. Elsewhere, they discuss Marcus Garvey and Langston Hughes and the global reverberations of anti-colonial struggle. Aaron Douglas reflects on jazz, telling the room: “It would be considered a revolution in relation to other music. It was not a revolution to us.” For David Greaves, those conversations feel strikingly current. “When they talk about whether to call themselves Black or Negro, that’s a discussion still happening now – you’ve got Black, African American, people of colour. And then there is still this question of what the diaspora should do in relation to Africa.” He points to footage in the film of Haile Selassie’s 1936 appeal to the League of Nations after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. While editing it, he thought of Volodymyr Zelenskyy seeking international support after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Selassie didn’t get help, but Zelenskyy was able to. And now they’re at a point where they’re building their own munitions, they’re fighting off the Russians with one hand and helping the Gulf states with the other.” The film also reminds viewers how recent America’s racial violence remains. David points to footage accompanying the anti-lynching poem The Lynching, ending on a young white girl watching with what he calls “fiendish glee”.

“She would have been about the same age as my father, which means her child would be my age, her grandchild my daughter’s age,” he said. “All three of us vote. The US is not that far away from that time, just three generations. That is kind of bracing.” UCLA medical school illegally used race in admissions, justice department finds Read more For him, the film arrives as Black history is once again being fought over in the US. Asked about Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the Smithsonian over race-focused programming, he said: “You look at it and think, Jesus, who is this? Why do they do this kind of thing? It’s who he is, and we just have to deal with it.” He added: “They’ve been doing everything they can to erase the Black experience in America, even removing signage from park service sites. What this film does is show a group of wonderful people sitting around talking about a time 50 years ago, and about their own present. These giant intellectuals that the media didn’t even realise existed.” The footage was originally shot but unused for Greaves’ 1974 documentary From These Roots. Though he went on to make dozens more films, including the experimental landmark documentary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, he never finished the Harlem project closest to his heart.

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

In the process, David says he came to understand his father more deeply. Reading notes in his books on eastern philosophy, he discovered the intellectual roots of conversations William often had about pain, suffering and consciousness. “He was a much heavier dude than I had realised,” he said, laughing.

When shaping the final cut, he followed one of his father’s principles: “My dad used to say if there’s something that affects you viscerally, go with it.” The unfinished film screened in fragments in 2024 and 2025, where it drew rapturous responses. Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it “ one of the greatest talking pictures ” he had ever seen.

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

“My dad was appreciated by those who knew documentary film, but he didn’t have the acclaim that he has now,” he said. “This film should cement him as a chronicler of the history of African Americans.” Explore more on these topics Documentary films Cannes film festival Festivals Race documentaries Share Reuse this content