Once Upon a Time in Harlem': The Harlem Renaissance Documentary 50 Years in the Making Finally Hits Theaters
In August 1972, filmmaker William Greaves threw a party that history almost forgot.
He found every surviving legend of the Harlem Renaissance he could locate, many of whom hadn't been in the same room in decades, and invited them to a cocktail party at Duke Ellington's Harlem townhouse. Greaves filmed all of it on 16mm. For four hours, the guests laughed, drank and argued about what their movement meant in a culture that was changing fast.
More than 50 years later, that footage is finally a film. Once Upon a Time in Harlem opens in select theaters Oct. 16 from NEON.
Who was in the room
The guest list reads like a syllabus. Painter Aaron Douglas, writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent, poet Arna Bontemps, photographer James Van Der Zee and composer Eubie Blake are among those captured in rare color footage. They aren't on a panel or reciting history. They're talking with one another, as people who lived it.
One line from the trailer sums up the film: "The Harlem Renaissance isn't dead because it lives with everybody."
A father's unfinished masterpiece
Greaves was a towering figure in Black cinema. He was a pioneer of public television, the executive producer and co-host of the groundbreaking series Black Journal, and the director of the experimental classic Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One.
He originally shot the Harlem footage for From These Roots, a 1974 film about the Renaissance that he finished using only archival material. Greaves went on to complete more than 70 films. Still, he considered this unfinished project his greatest work and spent much of his life trying to complete it.
He died in 2014. His wife and creative partner of 55 years, Louise Archambault Greaves, then worked to restore his films and get this one seen. She died in 2023.
The work fell to their son, David Greaves, who had been one of the cameramen at the original 1972 party. He shaped more than four hours of footage into a 100-minute film. William Greaves' granddaughter, Liani Greaves, produced it with Anne de Mare, who oversaw the restoration. It's a story of three generations of one family carrying a single film to the finish line.
The festival run
The documentary premiered at Sundance in January and quickly became one of the most acclaimed films of the festival. NEON, the studio behind Parasite and Anora, won U.S. rights after a bidding war that also drew Netflix, Mubi and the Criterion Collection.
Since then, the film has played Cannes' Directors' Fortnight, Telluride, TIFF, the BFI London Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. It holds a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it's widely considered an early contender for Best Documentary Feature.
Why the date matters
The Oct. 16 release lands just days after what would have been William Greaves' 100th birthday on Oct. 8. It's a centennial tribute to a man who spent his career making sure Black life was documented on its own terms.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem runs 100 minutes and opens in select theaters Oct. 16.
Here is our review of this glorious film from Sundance
