William Greaves‘ concept was as brilliant as it was simple: Throw a party for all the prominent, surviving luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance at the house of jazz legend Duke Ellington, and film the gathering cinéma-vérité style with three 16mm cameras. William’s son David — who ultimately came on to direct and finish “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” years after his father passed away in 2014 — was one of the camera operators at Ellington’s house. While in Cannes to screen the film, David came by The American Pavilion, presented by IndieWire, to talk about his father’s original vision.
“He wanted to capture these people who made that time so special, and it’s unusual to have people who actually created an era all together in one place and talking about the time that has become legendary in the Black community,” said Greaves.
What William engineered that evening went better than he could’ve imagined, and while at the AmPav tent, David said his father often referred to it as the “most important” footage he ever shot. Which begs the question, why was the elder Greaves, one of the most groundbreaking and prolific nonfiction filmmakers of his generation, unable to finish the film?
According to David, his father did an initial pass in the editing room, and was fairly pleased with the results, but that ultimately William and his wife and creative partner Louise Archambault Greaves, saw the film as going far beyond what they filmed at the Ellingtons.
“In his film treatment, it wasn’t just the party,” said David. “My stepmother Louise kept shooting for the next 10 years, things that were happening in Harlem.”
In the original treatment, Sidney Poitier would do narration, commenting on the events, and there would be additional interviews, focusing on how the Renaissance impacted the present day.
“They kept shooting contemporary interviews, and running up to Harlem and catching various events,” said David. “In his treatment, it was a wider view of not just that time, but also what Harlem was in the ’80s, [and how] the whole Black arts movement had grown out of the Renaissance. And I think they wanted to show that impact on the current time and intellectual scene.”
A theme at the heart of the finished film is the exploration of how culture is passed down through the generations, and what’s fascinating is how well that is embodied by David’s choice to whittle the sprawling project down to just the party footage. The other major alteration David made to the original treatment — a project spurred by his stepmother, Louise, who passed away in 2023 — was to incorporate his father into the story on screen.
“I had said to Louise, after he passed, ‘Dad couldn’t finish the film because he had to be a part of it,’” said David.
The initial impetus to make the film was William having grown up in the shadow of the Harlem Renaissance, with his already incredible body of work at that point (“Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” “Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class”) being a prime example of how what started in 1920s Harlem had rippled through the generations.
As David explained to the AmPav audience, he spent a great deal of time going through his father’s library, the books with elder Greaves’ notes in the margin, and spent time getting a better understanding of the ideas, references, and inspiration for the project. And those who will see the film will see William’s orchestration and framing of the event incorporated into it.
“He just wanted to capture this era, and yet he was so influenced by it that I felt that he had to be an integral part of it,” said David. “So that’s why it starts off the film, you see him, and then at the end of the film. And the idea frankly is to make sure that you were able to understand that this guy did this incredible thing.”
Watch the full conversation with David Greaves in the video above.
NEON releases “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” theatrically starting in October.
