A documentary built from footage that sat unfinished for more than 50 years is making its Columbus premiere on October 24, and it's arriving with a Sundance debut, a Cannes nomination, and raves from The New Yorker and The Hollywood Reporter already attached. “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” screens at the Wexner Center for the Arts as part of the venue's Unorthodocs documentary festival, capturing a single afternoon in 1972 when the last living giants of the Harlem Renaissance gathered under one roof.
The film centers on a four-hour cocktail party inside Duke Ellington's Harlem townhouse, according to seed facts drawn from Columbus Underground. Per The Criterion Collection, the gathering brought together painters Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce Nugent, poet Arna Bontemps, photographer James Van Der Zee, musicians Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, and Ida Mae Cullen, widow of poet Countee Cullen — many of whom hadn't seen one another in decades. Filmmaker William Greaves shot 60,000 feet of 16mm film that day.
A Half-Century Wait for Completion
Greaves originally gathered the footage for his 1974 short “From These Roots,” but he ultimately used archival still photographs for that project instead and set the party reel aside, as reported by The Guardian. The reason it stayed shelved for over 50 years, per that same account, was simple: there wasn't enough money to finish it. Greaves went on to make more than 100 nonfiction films and direct the avant-garde classic “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One.”
William Greaves died in 2014, and his widow and producing partner, Louise Archambault Greaves, died in 2023. It fell to his son, David Greaves — who had been a 26-year-old cinematographer on the original 1972 shoot — and his granddaughter, Liani Greaves, to finish restoring and editing the footage into the completed 100-minute feature, finishing the work more than 50 years after it was shot. David Greaves has spent decades publishing Our Time Press.
From Sundance to a Columbus Premiere
“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” made its world premiere in the Premieres section at Sundance in January, leading distributor Neon to acquire U.S. rights for an October 16 theatrical release. From there, the film screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in May, where it picked up a nomination for the L'Œil d'or documentary prize, before continuing on to Telluride, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called it one of the greatest talking pictures he had seen, while The Hollywood Reporter called it a piece of cinematic resistance.
The Columbus screening marks the film's local premiere and lands as part of the 10th anniversary edition of the Wexner Center's Unorthodocs festival, running October 22 through 26 in partnership with the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial under the theme “The Long View.” The Wexner event runs from 4 p.m. to 5:40 p.m. on October 24 at the Wexner Center, located at 1871 N. High St., and will screen in DCP format. A reception in the lower lobby follows at 6 p.m., where attendees can meet visiting Unorthodocs filmmakers.
Ticket Prices and the Rest of the Festival Day
General admission tickets cost $12, with member tickets at $8, adults 55 and over at $9, and student tickets at $6. Members could begin buying tickets on August 22, with general public sales opening on September 4. Later that same evening, following the reception, Unorthodocs continues with a 7 p.m. screening of the Gazan medical documentary “American Doctor,” which follows three U.S. physicians working in Gazan hospitals, accompanied by an in-person Q&A with director Poh Si Teng and physician Dr. Feroze Sidhwa.
A Venue Already in the Spotlight
The Film/Video Theater hosting these screenings has itself been the subject of local debate. Ohio State University trustees approved $2.3 million in professional services in March for a arts plaza overhaul, with design work beginning in May, that tasked designers with evaluating whether to modify or demolish the lower-level theater space, raising concerns among local film programmers and faculty. The venue has also drawn attention in recent months amid ongoing student activism around name-removal campaigns tied to the Wexner Center itself.
