08/29/2026
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM 🎬🎬🎬 Coming soon to The Nightlight Cinema
A decade after his death, one of the most significant and compelling filmmakers of the past century has one last trick up his sleeve: a trove of never-before-seen footage that he believed to be the most important he ever filmed. Genre-defying director William Greaves searches for the divine origins of his own creativity at a cocktail party he masterminded in 1972 for the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.
On a summer evening in 1972, a pivotal generation of Harlem Renaissance artists and intellectuals gathered at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. For over three 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.
