Greaves’s Capsule of African American Prosperity in “Once Upon A Time In Harlem”
Written by Bri LaMere. Photo by Bri LaMere.
On an August evening in 1972, four cameramen entered a home filled with many old friends and sages. They were led by William Greaves, who invited Harlem-Renaissance icons to the home of jazz artist, Duke Ellington, where they reminisced the night away.
50 years later, his son David Greaves completed the film. The loss of his father in 2014 set the film in action with the help of Liani Greaves, David Greaves’s stepmother. The film debuted internationally at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, screenings have been held across the United States, including the 2026 SCAD Savannah Film Festival.
A room full of creatives and founders of activist initiatives in the early 1900s for the African American community chat and mingle wearing clean suits and sparkly dresses. They’re filmed by a rotation of cameras for multiple hours. There are just enough of them to clue in on the frequent new side conversations about differing opinions of experience that are common among a gathering of old friends. The footage is an intimate experience similar to a well-shot cell phone video at a party, and it creates an ambiance that welcomes the audience to understand the wise group of artists’ knowledge for the man behind a camera in 1972.
Hundreds of thousands of African Americans lived in the neighborhood of Harlem, Manhattan, New York at the height of the era that is now known as the Harlem Renaissance. The new birth of African American communities began with the Great Migration at the turn of 1900. Black families moved to major cities of the Northern States and extended from Chicago to New York City. Harlem was the largest concentration of African American people in the world, creating a sense of freedom in the region that was unmatched elsewhere. In the post-screening Q and A with journalist for the Hollywood Reporter, Scott Feinberg, Greaves emphasized the incentive to release the film at a time where history is getting lost. It creates a time capsule of footage from
Prominent Harlem-Renaissance Era figures such as musician Eubie Blake, photographer James Van Der Zee, writer Ida Mae Cullen who was the widow of poet Countee Cullen, and a collection of other writers are present. The casual mingling of the party is accompanied by recitations of poems and speeches by African American men and women who drove change in their life through words. A few partygoers born in the 19th century reminisce on times spent working with late artists and activists such as Aaron Douglas (1899-1979).
In the theater full of patrons and SCAD students who remained seated for the credits to see one of the cameramen from that night themselves, Greaves describes one of the most important memories he has from the journey he’s been on with the film release. He went to a screening at an elementary school, where the Harlem Renaissance was an unheard of era for most kids, and he was in awe. Their interest in learning gave him hope for the future generation of historians, poets, artists, and more in the African American community.
