Once Upon a Time in Harlem Review: Greaves’ Long-Awaited Documentary Renaissance

Once Upon a Time in Harlem
(USA, 100 min.)
Dir. William Greaves, David Greaves
Prod. Liani Greaves, Anne de Mare
Programme: Premieres (World premiere)

 

Among the many insidious actions undertaken against Black Americans from the earliest days of slavery right through to Jim Crow and beyond was the erasure of their history. Connections to the past would bubble up from the disparate backgrounds represented by the broader community. These included musical instruments, traditional rhythms, musical stylings and artistic practices, and literary and philosophical ideas born from a legacy of exploitation and subjugation.

Despite these systemic mechanisms of erasure and silencing, there were moments when the stars aligned and marginalized people—and their ideas—were given space not to merely survive, but to thrive. One of these periods was in the 1920s and ’30s in northern Manhattan where the “Harlem Renaissance” occurred. It was during this period that a mass relocation from north to south took place, the so-called “Great Migration.” Communities were allowed to flourish economically and artistically, not entirely freed from the bonds of oppression, but certainly finding new and profound ways of letting their voices, art, music, and philosophies be heard both within their burgeoning community and around the world.

A half century after those events, William Greaves gathered many of the intellectual icons of that era together at the home of legendary musician Duke Ellington, himself a figure of the Renaissance. At Ellington’s home in August 1972, the documentarian, already celebrated for his formative and experimental 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, organized an event that was part cocktail party, part memorial, and part symposium, with the proceedings captured on film and key questions prompted by the director.

During his lifetime, Greaves never completed the project. But in 2026, a half-century after the event and a decade after William’s own passing in 2014, his son David and team of archivists, editors, and restoration experts have managed something akin to a miracle. For a project that itself was a reflection back on what then felt to be a distant past, in this age, the discussions, debates, and differing perspectives in the remarkable Once Upon a Time in Harlem could not be more timely.

David Greaves’ connection to the project runs deeper than simply taking over for his father’s absence, as he was one of the camera operators on that fateful day and a witness to the goings-on. Along with another Greaves, David’s daughter Liani (who serves as producer), you have a multi-generational perspective on what was captured and how to present it to contemporary audiences, resulting in something truly extraordinary.

Like the recent Oscar-winning Summer of Soul, there’s a deep sense of both discovery and joy in having this hitherto hidden footage finally see the light of day, .An argument could be made that the long gestation of the project actually makes its impact that much more powerful.

In the film, we see this group of elders arrive in all their finery, the crisp suits and colourful hats contrasting with some of the graffiti marking the handsome brownstones they walk past. Entering Ellington’s residence, there’s a sense of celebration with a twinge of mourning via explicit reminders of luminaries like political leader Marcus Garvey, poet Countee Cullen, or plastic artist Augusta Savage who were no longer there to speak their truths.

Many of those stories captured on film that day are no less legendary. Take Eubie Blake, for one, the pianist and composer who along with Noble Sissle helped reshape Broadway musicals forever. Or Leigh Whipper, the first Black member of Actors’ Equity, who at 96 years young at the time of filming, displays an almost superhuman memory, reciting verbatim poems and performances with the glimmer in his eyes of a far younger man. Richard Bruce Nugent, himself a poet, writer and painter, dominates much of the conversation held that day with his keen observations and unwavering commitment to expressing his own perspective.

There are some small moments that are truly joyful. Take an early scene where photographer James Vander Zee sits at Ellington’s handsome Steinway, tickling ivories and demonstrating his skills at the keys. Stills that he shot are the strongest connection to contemporaneous views of the Renaissance period, with flapper girls, wide-eyed starlets and top-hatted characters captured along with more quotidian scenes of Black life. Poet Arna Bontemps exudes the good-time feeling of his Francophone last name; his reminiscences warmly delivered with an occasional bite of ennui.

Among the remarkable individuals there that day was Bajan American writer, publisher, and self-avowed communist Richard B. Moore. The no-nonsense rhetoric from the man pricks any sense of nostalgia or hagiography – here was one who knew all those that marked this period in history. He provides the intellectual receipts to call bullshit when required. Decades old disagreements with other figures are articulated in ways that neither obviate the differences while giving respect to those who were unable to be there to speak for themselves. Many of the questions and criticisms he raises are particularly profound, and his sharp intellect and ability to navigate these complex issues with such coherence is one of the film’s more thrilling ingredients.

We are left then with something truly remarkable with Once Upon a Time in Harlem. One the one hand, it’s a brilliant observation of the past from the past, showcasing those who contributed to an explosion of cultural production while doing so at a turning point during the early 1970s, where massive gains had been made on the social front, but economic headwinds were about to plunge New York City into a near-apocalyptic downturn. On the other, the inadvertent delay means that today’s audiences can see more clearly some of what the participants in this party could not, while at the same time their direct access to what feels distant history draws everything from slavery and reconstruction through to the evolution of jazz and contemporary art to the present day.

This tug of war between past and present glories and struggles, both celebration and commemoration, makes this film as vital as any in Greaves’ canon. The use of split screens and overlapping dialogue feels completely coherent in 2026, whereas back in the early 1970s, it may well have been as astonishingly experimental and challenging as the wild formalism that Symbiopsychotaxiplasm exemplified. Yet this very sense of the contemporary gives these stories such power generations on, providing a pure form of historical record wrapped in an artistically sophisticated work of non-fiction.

Other films that celebrate similar gatherings, like Jean Bach’s A Great Day in Harlem, prove to be joyfully nostalgic and sympathetic to those being recalled. With Greaves, however, there’s more at play—a genuine design not to simply laud those from an early era, but to capture the sense of argument, debate, and discussion that fostered the movement in the first place. We are witness to the recollections from the participants in this dramatic era of change, and equally was can see how these movements were birthed in the first place. Thus Greaves captured in almost magical fashion this multifaceted portrait as relevant and resonant today, if not more so, than when the footage was captured those many years ago.

Once Upon a Time in Harlem premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

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