In 1972, director, editor, producer, and actor William Greaves, whose body of work includes Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968) and Nationtime (1972), gathered the remaining luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance in Duke Ellington’s apartment on 157th.
This meeting resulted in four hours of footage but didn’t become a movie – until now.
Greaves’s son, David Greaves, was one of four cameramen who were involved in the original shoot. Decades after the fact and years after William Greaves’s passing in 2014, David edited the footage of that meeting, compressing it into an hour and forty minutes of the enthralling whirlwind that is Once Upon a Time in Harlem.
Based upon a formal description, it might seem to the audience going in blindly into this film, which was earlier showcased at Sundance and the New York Film Festival, that they are going to see a traditional educational documentary presenting the “who is who” of the Harlem Renaissance. The reality couldn’t be further from that, as the film doesn’t ease its viewers into anything and isn’t in the business of teaching any conventional lessons. Instead, it throws its audience right in the middle of the conversation that started decades ago, as the Harlem Renaissance spanned from the end of the 1910s until the end of the 1930s.
While the documentary does feature formal introductions of some of the participants – such as photographer James Van Der Zee, activist Marcus Garvey, pianist Eubie Blake, artist Aaron Douglas, writer Arna Bontemps, just to name a few – they are kept brief, almost ephemeral. This film is by no means an equivalent of a ceremonial portrait where the subject is always aesthetically pleasing but seemingly unapproachable. Once Upon a Time in Harlem is the direct opposite, as it grants the audience a very “fly on the wall” sense of being put right inside the community with all the complicated undercurrents that run through it.
While the film and its participants celebrate Black culture and experience, there is a good deal of good-natured ribbing, debating, and outright arguing here. There are no classic talking heads or polished recountings, as the renaissance legends often interrupt or talk over each other, creating a sense of a very humane chaos. This sense is emphasized by the way David Greaves structures the film in accordance with his father’s trademark avant-garde, multilayered works, where there can never be just one perspective or point of view.
(NYC-based viewers get the additional bonus of further delving into William Greaves’s style, as Film Forum will feature a retrospective of his works October 23-29.)
With a title such as Once Upon a Time in Harlem, there might also be an unspoken expectation of an epic tale, transcending time and space. Ironically, this unique documentary manages to deliver on that subtle promise, while barely even leaving the room. Harlem (or, in a larger sense, New York) doesn’t play as major a role as one could initially expect, since the footage outside of Ellington’s apartment merely provides the context for what we are witnessing inside. And it’s precisely that ability to see that any renaissance, any part of culture or history, is never just a solid monolith, but a plexus of complex individuals, ideas, and passions, that makes this film, which might seem intimate in its shape, so grandiose in spirit.
The film is now playing in select theaters via Neon. Visit their official site for locations and showtimes.