William Greaves

Greaves was born in Harlem in New York City on October 8, 1926. He was one of seven children of taxi driver and minister Garfield Greaves and the former Emily Muir.[1] After graduating from the elite Stuyvesant High School at the age of 18, Greaves attended City College of New York to study science and engineering, but eventually dropped out to pursue a career in theater. Starting as a dancer, he eventually moved into acting, working in the American Negro Theater.[2]

While working on Black Journal, Greaves continued to produce films out of his own production company, William Greaves productions, which he had founded in 1964. One of the films he produced in this time period was a movie that blended his interest in the acting process with documentary film, which he called Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, an experimental, avant-garde film that he shot in the cinéma vérité documentary style in 1968.

The 1971 film takes place in Central Park in New York City and follows a documentary entitled Over the Cliff, one supposedly directed by Greaves himself and focusing on different pairs of actors who prepare to audition for a dramatic piece. Greaves employed three sets of camera crews to document this audition process. The first crew focuses on the actors in an effort to document the audition process. The second documents the first film crew. The third documents the actors, the remaining two crews, and any other passers-by or spectators who happen to fit into Over the Cliff's overarching theme of "sexuality."

As the film goes on, the various film crews start to grow irritated, as they come to perceive that Greaves is an incompetent and sexist (or perhaps even misogynistic) director. Divided about whether or not this entire situation is a plot by Greaves, the crews find themselves divided against him, at one point even plotting a revolt against their director. All of their doubts, insecurities, and complaints are captured on film, and, when the project is complete, they turn all of their footage over to Greaves (including the incriminating evidence). Greaves, in turn, incorporates their footage into his final product.

Through all of this, Greaves creates a giant circular meta-documentary featuring a documentary, a documentary about a documentary, and a documentary documenting a documentary about a documentary, and all in an attempt to create and capture reality on film. To add to the coherence or incoherence of the piece, the film is also edited untraditionally, with the different cameras' various shots intercut in split screens so that all three sets of simultaneous footage display the same sequence but from three perspectives.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was unable to find mainstream distribution and instead toured various festivals and museum screenings, gaining something of a cult status amongst those filmmakers who had seen it. It eventually caught the eye of famous actor and filmmaker Steve Buscemi who saw it at a screening at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992.[9] 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.[10]

While not working, Greaves could be found touring various universities and cultural centers around the world presenting his films, conducting workshops, and speaking about his experiences in indie film and the process of creating film as it is to actors, directors, professionals, and more.

Greaves died at the age of 87 at his home in Manhattan on August 25, 2014.[1]

Besides the Emmy he won for his work as executive producer of Black Journal in 1969, Greaves was nominated for an Emmy for his work Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class, which also won the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film Festival. Beyond these, many of his films have played at festivals and garnered numerous awards, with certain films (including Ida B. Wells) winning upwards of twenty awards across the many venues where they have been played.[8]

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.[10] 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.[11]

• Putting It Straight (1957)
• Smoke and Weather (1958)
• Emergency Ward (1959)
• Four Religions (1960)
• Wealth of a Nation (1964)
• The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1966)
• Black Journal (TV program) (1968–1977)
• Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class (1968)
• In the Company of Men (1969)
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
• The Voice of La Raza (1972)
• Struggle for Los Trabajos (1972)
• On Merit (1972);
• Nationtime, Gary (1973)
• From These Roots (1974)
• The Fighters (1974)
• Power Versus the People (1974)
• EEOC Story (1974)
• Whose Standard English? (1974)
• Ali, the Fighter (1975)
• The Marijuana Affair (1975)
• Just Doin' It: A Tale of Two Barbershops (1976)
• Opportunities in Criminal Justice (1978)
• Where Dreams Come True (1979)
• To Free Their Minds (1980)
• Space for Women (1981)
• Booker T. Washington, the Life and the Legacy (1982)
• A Plan for All Seasons (1983)
• Frederick Douglass: An American Life (1985)
• Beyond the Forest (1985)
• Fighter for Freedom (1985)
• Black Power in America: Myth or Reality? (1988)
• The Best of Black Journal (1988)
• Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989)
• That's Black Entertainment (1990)
• The Deep North (1990)
• Resurrections: Paul Robeson (1990)
• A Tribute to Jackie Robinson (1990)
• Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (2001)
• Ralph Bunche: The Odyssey Continues... (2003)
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 ½ (2005)

• Boyd, Todd. African Americans and Popular Culture. Vols 1–3. Westport (Conn.): Praeger, 2008. Print. ISBN 978-0275989224
• Dixon, Wheeler W. The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of 1960s American Experimental Cinema. Albany: State University of New York, 1997. Print. ISBN 978-0791435663
• MacDonald, Scott and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart. William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Print. ISBN 9780231199599
• Martin, Michael T. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence, and Oppositionality. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. Print. ISBN 978-0814325889

• williamgreaves.com
• William Greaves at IMDb
• William Greaves at the University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection
• William Greaves Collection at Indiana University Bloomington Black Film Center/Archive
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (TCM Movie Morlocks)
• David Pitts, "William Greaves, Pioneering African-American Filmmaker", IIP Digital, February 26, 2002.