Once Upon A Time In Harlem

The premise is simple: one day in 1972, intrepid young filmmaker William Greaves gathered a who’s who of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in the apartment of Duke Ellington. Poets, painters, actors, musicians and organisers, some of whom hadn’t seen each other in a half century, pour punch and recall the heady days of the early 1920s, when Harlem was a destination for Black thinkers and artists. Old friends and comrades rehash even older debates—political differences, the Back to Africa movement, the lure of commercialism—but on this afternoon, just as fifty years prior, the dapper, vibrant, if slightly more wrinkled community experiences what librarian Regina Andrews calls “the joy of living and creating together.” They laugh and swap stories, sing songs and mourn those who couldn’t join them. James Van Der Zee, the great photographer, ventures over to the piano; the 96-year-old Leigh Whipper recites a poem written by his fishing buddy Paul Laurence Dunbar. Another fifty years later, Greaves’s son David, along with granddaughter Liani, finally completed the project. David, who had operated a camera during the shoot, also appears in the film’s closing sequence, then just a small boy who smiles as he meets his father’s eyes. (Genevieve Yue)

William Greaves (Auswahl): PUTTING IT STRAIGHT (1957), EMERGENCY WARD (1959), FOUR RE- LIGIONS (1960), SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (1968), STILL A BROTHER: INSIDE THE NEGRO MIDDLE CLASS (1968), NATIONTIME (1973), IDA B. WELLS: A PASSION FOR JUSTICE (1989), RALPH BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY (2001)