Once Upon a Time in Harlem

In 1972, pioneering filmmaker William Greaves gathered surviving luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance inside Duke Ellington’s townhouse and let the cameras roll. Eubie Blake, James Van Der Zee, Arna Bontemps, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gerri Major, Romare Bearden, and others reminisce, argue, laugh, interrupt, and remember a movement built from Black genius in motion. More than 50 years later, Once Upon a Time in Harlem arrives as a moving-image artifact, alive with the presence of its towering figures returned right into the room.

Greaves, the visionary behind Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), left behind 60,000 feet of 16mm footage to be rediscovered for this film. His son David Greaves (one of the original camera operators) and David’s daughter Liani bring the footage into the present as both family inheritance and public archive. Premiering at Sundance before screening in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the film is a portal into a room of style, memory, disagreement, and brilliance that reminds us a renaissance is not only remembered, it is reborn.

It’s both a sublime hang-out of a film and a celebration of individual achievements, a fascinating map of a long-ago scene and a referendum on legacy. That this sumptuous footage, allowed room to breathe, exists at all feels like a miracle; that it takes shape here as a coherent, inventive yet straightforwardly informative film is an intergenerational feat… a faultless, captivating experience.

Adrian Horton, The Guardian

No matter one’s distance from the Harlem Renaissance, Once Upon A Time In Harlem transforms its cultural milieu into personal memory, suffusing history with enormity and reinvigorating it for generations to come.

Siddhant Adlakha, Observer

The conversations could not be more stimulating, offering a glimpse of Black America past and present that is joyous, defiant and sobering.

Tim Grierson, Screen International