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William Greaves (USA, 1926), a black man raised in Harlem, a former actor of the the American Negro Theater and an alumnus of the Actors Studio (founded in 1947 by Elia Kazan and others), moved to Canada in 1952 and directed the documentary
Emergency Ward (1959), about life in a hospital. He moved back to the USA
to join the Civil Rights movement and was hired by government agencies to direct
the documentary Wealth of a Nation (1964). The success of that film
allowed him to make in Africa a documentary about black culture,
The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1966). However, it wasn't
distributed in the USA. The 90-minute documentary
Still a Brother - Inside the Negro Middle Class (1967) was instead
made specifically for television (although it had to wait one year before being
broadcast). In 1968 Greaves was then hired to oversee the monthly TV program
"Black Journal".
At the same time he directed an avantgarde film,
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm - Take One (1968), which is partly documentary,
partly nouvelle-vague inspired cinema, and partly "happening". Greaves plays
the role of a clumsy director who wants to make a film, and the actors contribute
to determine the story.
After leaving "Black Journal", Greaves
documented a crucial political convention of black people in Nationtime Gary (1973) and dedicated
From These Roots (1974) to the Harlem Renaissance. But mostly
specialized in biographies:
Ali the Fighter (1971),
Booker T. Washington (1982),
Frederick Douglass (1985),
and
Ida B. Wells (1989).
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