William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century.
His complex career remains among the most productive and diverse in the annals of American cultural history. Growing up in a working-class West Indian immigrant family in Harlem as the cultural Renaissance of the 1920’s turned into the long Depression of the 1930’s, Greaves was able to defy social, racial and economic barriers to become one of the most prolific documentary filmmakers of his era.
The 52-year filmmaking career of Greaves has resulted in an immense, multi-faceted body of work that the Ithaca College Library’s FLEFF Series on Greaves highlights.
In 2015, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One was one of the 25 films selected that year to be added to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, whose mission is “to ensure the survival, conservation, and increased public availability of America’s film heritage.”