By Mary Alice Miller
It is extremely rare for a film to screen at the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. It is even more rare for a film to be scouted for international premiere at Cannes, the pinnacle of international prestige and artistic cinematography. Both have happened to Once Upon a Time in Harlem (2026).
The film premiered at Cannes on May 18 where it received a four minute standing ovation. It was co-directed by the late documentarian William Greaves and his son David Mark Greaves (Publisher of Our Time Press), and produced by William’s granddaughter Liani Greaves and Anne de Mare, who also served as editor. The sustained standing ovation brought tears to the eyes of David and Liani.
The documentary time capsule takes place at an August 1972 cocktail party in Duke Ellington’s Harlem townhouse. Attendees were the creme de la creme of the Harlem Renaissance, including writers, artists, painters, and activists whose work contributed to black American intellectual and political life and culture in the 1920s.
Among Black luminaries who gathered together that day were poet and novelist Arna Bontemps; artist Romare Bearden; actor Leigh Whipper, then 96; Ida Mae Cullen, the widow of the poet Countee Cullen; the musician Eubie Blake, poet and painter Richard Bruce Nugent; scholar John Henrik Clarke; photographer James Van Der Zee; painter Aaron Douglas; aviator Herbert “The Black Eagle” Julien; and journalist Ted Poston.
Duke Ellington himself was unable to attend, but his sister Ruth was present.
William Greaves can be seen in the film, directing conversations and interviews. An eagle eye can spot fleeting glimpses of young David Greaves, whom his father asked to be one of the four cameramen documenting the event.
Guests debated the use of the term “Negro” versus “Afro-American”, Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie and the wider anti-colonial movement, and the role of jazz in art and politics.
Those in attendance surely experienced Jim Crow, were aware of rampant lynchings, and were prohibited from using “white” water fountains, swimming pools, hotels, and restaurants, no matter their prominence in the wider American culture. Viewers of Once Upon a Time in Harlem could wonder what they would say about today’s backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and the attack on hard fought for voting rights.
William Greaves has assistance assembling the group with the help of Jean Hutson and Regina Andrews, two librarians at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The elder Greaves filmed the soiree for four hours, resulting in 60,000 feet of 16mm of film.
The impetus for William Greaves to film the event was evident in what he said in 1969, “It became clear to me that unless we black people began to produce information for screen and television there would always be a distortion of the ‘black image.” Three years later he filmed the gathering.
Ironically, as William Greaves envisioned a film that would counteract the pervasive Stepin Fetchit-type negative stereotypes of Black people emanating from Hollywood, just a few years later the nascent Blaxploitation films would emerge. Others later counteracted with the Afrocentric movement.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem remained unfinished when William Greaves passed away in 2014. His wife, creative partner of 55 years, and David’s step-mother, Louise Archambault Greaves picked up the baton by restoring his 70 films and preserving the Harlem Renaissance footage.
Restoration of the footage began in 2021. The project was handed to David and Liani before Louise Archambault Greaves passed away in 2023.
According to David Greaves, Louise emphatically declined when the Smithsonian asked for a copy of the footage. Instead, she kept it preserved in a storage facility.
Restoring the footage was a monumental task.
The film was recorded by two camera crews, each with one sound man.
“One of the great challenges when we first started the project was assembling and synching all of the footage because back then footage didn’t have sound attached,” said Anne de Mare, who oversaw digitizing the footage. “The sound was separate and actually in separate location, so pulling it all together was the greatest jigsaw puzzle that I have ever worked on.”
The 1 hour and 40 minute film leaves rich footage available.
“Greaves Productions is committed to creating a public facing archive in which people will be able to watch all the interviews and footage. They will be able to search down,” said Liani Greaves. “We plan on doing a lot of educational screenings of the film.”
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, William Greaves best known experimental documentary filmed in Central Park in 1968 was rejected by Cannes. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2015.
Fifty years later, William Greaves’ foundational work that lead to Once Upon a Time in Harlem has been warmly embraced by Cannes.
“My father wanted to preserve that time, people who had created at that time. This was his most important film,” said David Greaves. “My dad was appreciated by those who knew documentary film, but he didn’t have the acclaim that he has now. This film should cement him as a chronicler of the history of African Americans.”
Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a Cannes 2026 Nominee for Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award and Golden Eye Documentary Prize.
David and Liani Greaves hope to see a theatrical release of Once Upon a Time in Harlem in time to mark the hundredth anniversary of William Greaves’s birth on October 8 in New York and London, and then will screen at top film festivals in the fall.
Neon, an American independent film distribution company, is acquiring Once Upon a Time in Harlem aftre this year’s Sundance Film Festival for distribution.
