Description
Book SynopsisWilliam Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves's remarkable career.
Trade ReviewDuring his long and immensely productive filmmaking career, William Greaves remained focused on educating audiences about African and African American contributions to culture and history, and about the ways in which this long and productive history has been ignored and distorted. His many and varied films, beginning in the late 1950s and continuing into the 2000s, are a major achievement by an American master, an engagement with cinema long past ready for rediscovery. -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
Scott MacDonald and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart have broken new ground on a whole new field of film study with
William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission. A rewarding adventure in itself, this is the first study of this scope on Greaves, an absolutely essential and kaleidoscopic figure of filmmaking and film thinking but one who until now has been hidden within his immense productivity. -- Terri Simone Francis, director of the Black Cinema Center/Archive, Indiana University
Some artists are so far ahead of their time that the uniqueness of their vision goes unrecognized. So it was with William Greaves, a man of many talents, who created innovative forms to represent crucial issues. Here, finally, is the appreciation he has long deserved. -- Bill Nichols, author of
Introduction to Documentary, third edition
Through a thoughtfully curated selection of essays and other materials, the editors provide readers with a thorough understanding of the cultural context, aesthetic influences, and influence of William Greaves’s work. Following the director’s understanding of film as constantly in flux, the editors’ approach offers a beginning, or “take one,” to what they hope is a longer discussion of the director’s oeuvre. The result is the first detailed study of an important twentieth-century filmmaker that promises to engage scholars and students alike. -- Paula J. Massood, author of
Making a Promised Land: Harlem in Twentieth-Century Photography and FilmTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface. William Greaves: Renaissance Man and Race Man
Note on Style
1. William Greaves, Documentary Filmmaking, and the African-American Experience, by Adam Knee and Charles Musser
2. Meta-interview with William Greaves (an Audiobiography), by Scott MacDonald
3. Interview with Louise Archambault Greaves, by Scott MacDonald
4. Interview with David Greaves, by Scott MacDonald
5. The Efficacy of Acting, by Katherine Kinney
6. POEM/1965, by William Greaves
7. The First World Festival of Negro Arts: An Afro-American View, by William Greaves
8. Views Across the Atlantic: An American Vision of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, by Joseph L. Underwood
9. Sisters Inside
Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class—Black Women Through the Lens of William Greaves, by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart
10. The Documentary as Sociodrama: William Greaves’s
In the Company of Men (1969) and
The Deep North (1988), by J. J. Murphy
11. Pugilism and Performance: William Greaves, Muhammad Ali, and the Making of
The Fight, by Alexander Johnston
12.
Black Journal: A Few Notes from the Executive Producer, by William Greaves
13. 100 Madison Avenues Will Be of No Help, by William Greaves
14.
Black Journal: A Personal Look Backward, by St. Clair Bourne
15. “By, For and About”:
Black Journal and the Rise of Multicultural Documentary in New York City, 1968–1975, by Charles Musser
16. William Greaves,
Black Journal, and the Long Roots of Black Internationalism, by Celeste Day Moore
17. Government-Sponsored Film and
Latinidad:
Voice of La Raza (1971), by Laura Isabel Serna
18. Afterthoughts on the Black American Film Festival, by William Greaves
19.
Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice: Personal Production Notes, by Michelle Duster
Dossier on the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Films20. Proposal:
Theatrical Short Subject, by William Greaves
21.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One Rediscovered: A Conversation with Dara Meyers-Kingsley, by Scott MacDonald
22. The Country in the City: Central Park as Metaphor in Jonas Mekas’s
Walden and William Greaves’s
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, by Scott MacDonald
23. “Just Another Word for Jazz”: The Signifying Auteur in William Greaves’s
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (Excerpt), by Akiva Gottlieb
24. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2, by William Greaves
25. Some Concepts and Logistics in Shooting the Two Excerpts of Take 2½, by William Greaves
26. The Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Effect on Filmmaking Dynamics, by William Greaves
27. The Symbio Cinematic Environment: An Aesthetic yet Scientific Theory for the Film, by William Greaves
28. The Daring, Original,
and Overlooked:
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, by Richard Brody
29. Still No Answers, by Amy Taubin
30. “We’re Not Raping Bill”: Race and Gender Politics in
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and
Take 2½, by Joan Hawkins
31. Symbiopsychotaxiplasticity: Some Takes on William Greaves, by Franklin Cason, Jr., and Tsitsi Jaji
32. A Guy Who Could Think Around the Corner:
Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, by Patricia R. Zimmermann
33. Revealing Greaves: Unhiding His Archive, by Shola Lynch
Filmography
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
