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  • 10 hours ago
A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. For four hours, this extraordinary group – many of whom had not seen each other in fifty years – reminisced, critiqued, argued, laughed and drank while wrestling with their place in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape. Shot on 16mm film, newly restored and now directed by Greaves’ son David, this landmark film is at once a self-exploration and an inquiry into the heart of the critical mass of energy called the Harlem Renaissance. William Greaves’ intent was not only to document these artists and intellectuals as they spoke about their lives and work but also to plumb the meaning of the extraordinary creative period in which they lived to help us better understand how culture has been passed on from one generation to another and the role that the artist plays in keeping it alive.
Transcript
00:17Be here with all these intelligences, I'm afraid to open my mind.
00:31It was a beautiful thing to expound your literary ideas, you know, they can be very important
00:39to you when they're yours.
00:44This idea that the Harlem Renaissance was just a flash in the pan, it is false.
00:48The art comes out of a community, and it comes out of audaciousness.
00:52And we ought to see the relevance to our present struggle.
00:56This is a historical moment, believe me when I do.
01:06We must not forget, the Renaissance will never end.
01:18You got it?
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