Movies: William Greaves

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot ...

After ex-con Joe Braxton violates his probation, he is given a second chance. All he has to do is drive a group of special kids across the country....

A light-skinned African-American family are "passing" in an all-white New England town. When the truth comes out, the more prejudiced neighbors demand their expulsion from the community....

This short documentary offers a look at the life forms on the Queen Elizabeth Islands within the Arctic Circle. Even in this frigid zone of icebergs and glaciers a surprising variety of wildlife and vegetation is seen. Writings from the logbooks of e...

A movie about making movies about making movies. In 1968, William Greaves shot several pairs of actors in a scene in which a woman confronts her husband and ends their relationship. In "Take 2 1/2," Greaves starts with 1968 takes of one of these pair...

Produced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, this film traces the ongoing struggle for equality by the Spanish-speaking residents of the United States. Through a fictitious scenario and real discussions with a range of individuals, includ...

A crooked real estate tycoon tricks a trusting young woman out of her small candy store. When he is found dead, the girl is suspected of the crime....

A documentary on the career of William Greaves, featuring Greaves, his wife and co-producer Louise Archambault, actor Ruby Dee, filmmaker St. Clair Bourne, and film scholar Scott MacDonald. Released within Criterion's Symbiopsychotaxiplasm set....

The film questions whether the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s effectively changed the Black community, and American society more widely, and examines the notion of Black power itself. Greaves interviewed major Black leaders, such as Franklin Thom...

In this intimate portrait—produced for a segment of National Education Television's "Black Journal" television program—legendary jazz musician Alice Coltrane plays the harp and discusses her thoughts on music, spirituality, family, and the legacy of ...

This film explores freedom of speech in the United States of America...

Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morr...

This director's cut of the William Greaves' documentary short film dramatizes the life and deeds of the noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass....

Unsuccessful gambler 'Dollar Bill' Burton lives in a crummy New York basement room with old friend Bob and a new roommate, friendly blues singer 'Alabama' Lee. But, tired of being broke, Dollar Bill gets more steady employment...doing illegal errands...

Few remember the name, much less the historical achievements, of Dr. Ralph Johnson Bunche. Yet, this African American mediator and United Nations diplomat was the first person of color anywhere in the world to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace....

A report on the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, a historic event that gathered Black voices from across the political spectrum, among them Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, Coretta Scott King, Richard Hatcher, Amiri Bar...

Ali the Fighter was made in 1975, when the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight was still fresh in everyone's minds. Filmmaker William Greaves frames Ali's rise to glory, beginning with his "Cassius Clay" days back in Louisville....

Designed for class instruction and career education, and to prove that space exploration isn’t just for the boys. The film interviews women employed in the space transportation programs of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and ...

Joe Louis, portraying himself, is a good influence on a group of Harlem youths who are tempted to "go bad" by a gangster known as Caper, an older brother of one of the youths....

An American detective investigates the drug trade's influence on violence in Jamaica and corruption among government officials and high-ranking members of the police force....