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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

Behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the Fight of the Century between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali....

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

In 1971, maverick filmmaker William Greaves trained his cameras on both Muhammad Ali and his opponent, Joe Frazier, ahead of the “Fight of the Century” at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The epic battle was supposed to be Ali's big comeback followi...

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....

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

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 ...

This 1959 documentary short is a frank portrait of the daily operations inside the Montreal General Hospital’s emergency ward....

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 ...

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...

Examines the history and purpose of the "merit system" used by the U.S. Civil Service in hiring and promoting Federal Government workers. Shows how the system impacts jobs and career prospects for women and minorities....

Directed by African American William Greaves and narrated by actor Ricardo Montalban, Where Dreams Come True is a 1979 NASA film highlighting the contributions of women and minorities and encouraging more to consider a career at the agency. The docum...

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....

This film records the struggle for life within the Arctic Circle. It reveals flowers of startling beauty, whose entire life cycles last less than thirty days, and strange animals like the shaggy musk-ox, the shy lemming, and migrant water birds that ...