Уильям Гарфилд Гривз: Жизнь и творчество американского документалиста

American documentary filmmaker

William Garfield Greaves

In 1948, Greaves joined the Actors Studio and studied alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Anthony Quinn, Shelley Winters, and others. During this time, he undertook a number of roles on the stage and in the theatre, but eventually grew dissatisfied with the roles in which he was being cast. Miracle in Harlem (1948) was one of the films he appeared in during this period. He also appeared in Souls of Sin (1949), one of the last race films, which saw him sing and act. Realizing that most of the parts he could play were stereotypes and derivative due to racism prevalent throughout American culture at the time, Greaves looked into African American history. Seeing that his opportunities would be limited were he to continue to stay in America and focus on his planned course of acting, Greaves tried his hand at movie making, electing to move to Canada and study at the National Film Board of Canada. After six years working in various stages of production from director to editing, Greaves found himself behind the camera as director and editor of a film called Emergency Ward, which focused on the goings on of a hospital emergency room on a Sunday evening.

As the 1960s saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, Greaves returned to The United States to participate in the ongoing discourse regarding African Americans and their place in society. Based on his work on Emergency Ward, he was hired by both the United Nations and the film division of the United States Information Agency (USIA) to make several documentaries, the two most acclaimed of which were Wealth of a Nation, an examination of personal freedom as a key boon to America's strength, and The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1968), which documented the 1966 World Festival of Black Arts, a celebration of both African and African American culture. In 1969, following soon after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., public broadcasting syndicate National Educational Television (a direct predecessor to the modern day PBS) began to air a show called Black Journal with a mission to present news by African Americans, for African Americans, and about African Americans. After a tumultuous opening during the first few tapings, the NET network promoted Greaves from co host to executive producer of the show. Greaves ran the show until 1970 winning an Emmy award for himself and the show in 1969.

In 1970, after working on Black Journal for three years, Greaves opted to leave television to focus on film making. In 1971 he released a film titled Ali, the Fighter, which focused on Muhammad Ali's first attempt to regain his professional boxing heavyweight title. Greaves then went on to produce and make films for various commissions and government agencies, including NASA and The Civil Service Commission. After this, Greaves produced numerous works, including From These Roots, Nationtime: Gary, Where Dreams Come True, Booker T. Washington: Life and Legacy, Frederick Douglass: An American Life, Black Power in America: Myth or Reality?, The Deep North, and Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice, which was narrated by Nobel Prize in Literature and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison. In 2001, Greaves released one of his most ambitious works Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. According to Greaves, between attempting to secure funds and researching countless old manuscripts, photos, and newsreel footage, the film took him ten years to make. The final product was edited down from an initial cut of seventeen hours to two hours for the PBS show American Odyssey. The final project, narrated by Sidney Poitier, sought to bring the name of Ralph Bunche back into the public lexicon as Greaves felt he was an important, yet forgotten, political figure, one important to African American history and the Civil Rights Movement. Ten years later, Buscemi and director Steven Soderbergh teamed up to secure widespread distribution for the film as well as financing for the making of one of the four sequels Greaves had considered once he had finished the initial product in the late 1960s. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was finally released theatrically under its new title Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One alongside its sequel, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2½, in 2003. The sequel focused on two of the actors from the original and picks up the narrative of the original film some thirty five years later.

On August 23, 1959, Greaves married Louise Archambault, who became a frequent collaborator on his projects, going so far as to even produce his documentary on Ralph Bunche. They have three children. Between 1969 and 1982, Greaves taught film and television acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. In 1980, Greaves was honored alongside Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando, Arthur Penn, Sally Field, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Shelley Winters, Dustin Hoffman, Estelle Parsons, and Ellen Burstyn with the Actors Studio in New York's first ever Dusa Award. Also in the same year, he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and received a special homage at the first Black American Independent Film Festival in Paris. In 2008 the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival honored him with its Career Award. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was added to the National Film Registry in 2015. In 2020, Firelight Media established a William Greaves Fund to support mid career nonfiction filmmakers of color.