David Greaves was 26 when his father, the pioneering filmmaker William Greaves, requested him to be one in every of 4 cameramen documenting a historic gathering in Harlem.
In August 1972, William Greaves assembled as many artists, writers, poets, musicians and organizers from the Harlem Renaissance as he may. They got here for a cocktail celebration at Duke Ellington’s Harlem townhouse. There, they talked concerning the seminal Nineteen Twenties cultural motion: what they remembered, who to not overlook, what all of it meant.
“My father would say, ‘Capture the life that’s happening,’” David remembers.
It took greater than half a century for the consequence to see the sunshine of day. But 54 years after that gathering, “Once Upon a Time Harlem” screened this week on the Cannes Film Festival.
No film in Cannes had an extended street to get right here. William Greaves died in 2014 having by no means completed what he felt can be his most enduring work. With David finally stepping in as director, his household noticed it by way of.
“It’s not the film he was thinking of in his mind,” David Greaves mentioned in an interview by the seaside in Cannes. “But it’s definitely the film he would have wanted.”
It was becoming that “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” acquired its second in Cannes. William Greaves’ 1968 opus, “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” was rejected on the time by the pageant. The experimental documentary would nonetheless develop to turn into revered by filmmakers, and in 2015 it was added to the National Film Registry.
Given that historical past, it was laborious for David Greaves to summarize what it felt prefer to be on the pageant, bringing his father’s work lastly to cinema’s world stage.
“It feels magical,” he mentioned, his eyes welling up. “Even surreal.”
Now, “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” is likely to be the nonfiction film occasion of the 12 months. Following its premiere earlier this 12 months, Neon acquired it and is planning an awards marketing campaign. It will play at high fall festivals. After seeing an unfinished reduce of the movie final 12 months, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody known as it “a film for the ages.”
Gathered that day in Harlem was a spectrum of Harlem Renaissance luminaries together with the poet and novelist Arna Bontemps; the artist Romare Bearden; the actor Leigh Whipper, then 96; Ida Mae Cullen, the widow of the poet Countee Cullen; the musician Eubie Blake, the poet and painter Richard Bruce Nugent; the scholar John Henrik Clarke.
Together, they take turns reminiscing concerning the flourishing in Harlem — laughing, arguing over and celebrating their place in Black historical past. In the Seventies, it wasn’t as well known. Now, the movie arrives at a time when African American historical past is more and more below siege in America.
For David Greaves, the definition of the Harlem Renaissance is easy: “It’s the wellspring.”
“People say: How can there be a renaissance? People without history arriving here?” he says. “I first wanted to open the film with a history stretching back to Africa. Everyone was like, ‘OK, OK, where’s the party?”
Instead, the documentary opens with a poem that Greaves felt expressed all of it: Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”
William Greaves’ unique objective with the footage was to make use of it for the 1974 movie “From These Roots.” But he as an alternative opted to make use of archival images. Over the years, he would return to the 1972 footage in Harlem however by no means formed it into a movie.
After he died in 2014 on the age of 87, his widow, Louise Archambault Greave, took up the venture. She died in 2023 however not earlier than securing funding for the restoration.
“Louise was a lock protecting the footage. She told the Smithsonian, who asked for a copy, ‘No!’” David Greaves says, laughing.
Though he was raised helping on his father’s movies, David Greaves didn’t stay in moviemaking. He co-founded and ran the progressive Brooklyn neighborhood newspaper Our Time Press. It was years earlier than he stepped ahead to direct. His daughter, Liani, is a producer.
“Louis was talking about directors. ‘Who could we get?’ I just sat there and said, ‘I don’t know,’” David Greaves says. “Then it got here to some extent within the enhancing room after she had handed, (adviser) Marcia Smith mentioned, ‘Who’s going to direct this? Are you going to direct it?’ And I mentioned, ‘Yes.’ I couldn’t think about anybody else directing this movie. I simply couldn’t do it.
David Greaves barely remembers what he shot in 1972. He’s seen fleetingly in a mirror at occasions. But it was too way back to actually keep in mind — longer than the time span from the Harlem Renaissance to that townhouse assembly. “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” is a luminous artifact of the previous, twice over.
“Usually after seeing a movie, people say ‘Congratulations,’” says Greaves. “Here they say, ‘Thank you.’”
Greaves can hardly get the phrases out earlier than the tears come streaming once more. He wipes them away, lifts his head and smiles.
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