David Greaves was 26 when his father, the pioneering filmmaker William Greaves, asked him to be one of four cameramen documenting a historic gathering in Harlem. In August 1972, William Greaves assembled as many artists, writers, poets, musicians and organizers from the Harlem Renaissance as he could. They came for a cocktail party at Duke Ellington's Harlem townhouse. There, they talked about the seminal 1920s cultural movement: what they remembered, who not to forget, what it all meant. "My father would say, 'Capture the life that's happening,'" David recalls. It took more than half a century for the result to see the light of day. But 54 years after that gathering, "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" screened this week at the Cannes Film Festival. No movie in Cannes had a longer road to get here. William Greaves died in 2014 having never finished what he felt would be his most enduring work. With David ultimately stepping in as director, his family saw it through. "It's not the film he was thinking of in his mind," David Greaves said in an interview by the beach in Cannes. "But it's definitely the film he would have wanted." It was fitting that "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" got its moment in Cannes. William Greaves' 1968 opus, "Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One," was rejected at the time by the festival. The experimental documentary would nevertheless grow to become revered by filmmakers, and in 2015 it was added to the National Film Registry. Given that history, it was hard for David Greaves to summarize what it felt like to be at the festival, bringing his father's work finally to cinema's global stage. "It feels magical," he said, his eyes welling up. "Even surreal." Now, "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" might be the nonfiction movie event of the... Read More