Once Upon a Time in Harlem: VIFF 2026
The Vancouver International Film Festival returns for their 45th year this October 1-11 for another curated season celebrating the best in independent, Canadian, documentary, and international shorts and features.
In 1972, pioneering filmmaker William Greaves gathered surviving luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance inside Duke Ellington’s townhouse and let the cameras roll. Eubie Blake, James Van Der Zee, Arna Bontemps, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gerri Major, Romare Bearden, and others reminisce, argue, laugh, interrupt, and remember a movement built from Black genius in motion. More than 50 years later, Once Upon a Time in Harlem arrives as a moving-image artifact, alive with the presence of its towering figures returned right into the room.
Greaves, the visionary behind Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), left behind 60,000 feet of 16mm footage to be rediscovered for this film. His son David Greaves (one of the original camera operators) and David’s daughter Liani bring the footage into the present as both family inheritance and public archive. Premiering at Sundance before screening in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, the film is a portal into a room of style, memory, disagreement, and brilliance that reminds us a renaissance is not only remembered, it is reborn.
Content Considerations: Discussions of slavery and racism
Saturday, October 3
Doors: 3:00 pm | Film: 3:30 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.
Tickets HERE
VIFF thanks the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations for their continued stewardship of the unceded and occupied land on which our work takes place. As an organization founded and predominantly directed by settlers and immigrants, we understand our responsibility to seek out and build authentic relationships with Indigenous communities, and to allow this ongoing dialogue to influence our practices. As part of this process, we remain committed to collaborating with and supporting Indigenous artists, filmmakers, curators, and audiences.
