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WILLIAM
GREAVES is executive producer/director and writer of RALPH
BUNCHE: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY, a recently completed documentary
on the life and times of the world-renown African-American Nobel
Peace Prize Winner and United Nations statesman, who not only
pioneered the organization's peace-keeping and conflict resolution
strategies, but was also one of the leading advocates of the
UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 2-hour documentary
is narrated by Oscar winner Sidney Poitier.
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Greaves left an acting career as a featured actor on Broadway,
in television, and in films, to work behind the camera on the
production staff of The National Film Board of Canada. An independent
filmmaker based in New York, Greaves has produced more than
200 documentary films, seven of which have earned more than
seventy international film festival awards, an Emmy, and four
Emmy nominations. In 1980 he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers
Hall of Fame and was the recipient of a special "homage" at
the first Black American Independent Film Festival in Paris
that same year. Greaves is also the recipient of an "Indy,"
the Special Life Achievement Award of the Association of Independent
Video and Filmmakers, a nationwide organization.
For two years he was executive producer and co-host of the ground-breaking
public affairs network television series BLACK JOURNAL,
which won an Emmy for outstanding public affairs television
programming. His films have been narrated and/or hosted by such
well-known actors and performers as Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier,
Bob Hope, Anthony Quinn, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, Gil Noble,
Al Freeman Jr., Ricardo Montalban, Ossie Davis, Rita Moreno,
Brock Peters and Marie Osmond.
More recently, William Greaves produced, directed and wrote
IDA B. WELLS: A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, featuring Nobel
Prize winner Toni Morrison, for the PBS television series THE
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. The film has received more than 20
film festival awards. Among the many other outstanding films
his company has produced is the documentary IN THE COMPANY
OF MEN, winner of 8 film festival awards, and FROM THESE
ROOTS, a social, political and cultural exploration of the
Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. "ROOTS" has won twenty-two
film festival awards and is recognized as a classic in African-American
history studies. It has aired on PBS and NBC.
In addition to making documen-taries, Greaves was executive
producer for Universal Pictures' hit motion picture BUSTIN'
LOOSE, starring Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson. He also
produced, wrote, and directed three other feature films: ALI,
THE FIGHTER, starring Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, THE
MARIJUANA AFFAIR, starring Calvin Lockhart and Ingrid Wang,
and the recently rediscovered and highly-acclaimed avant-garde
feature, SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE. The latter
has been shown at numerous festivals including Sundance, Munich,
San Sebastian, Sydney, Paris, San Turino, Graz, Goteberg, Denver,
the Hamptons International Film Festival and, more recently,
the Lake Placid Film Festival.
Greaves' commitment to chronicling the lives and concerns of
African Americans on film has been demonstrated throughout his
career. Prominent among such works are THE FIRST WORLD FESTIVAL
OF NEGRO ARTS, a documentary that records the historical
gathering in Dakar, Senegal of major Black artists and intellectuals
from the African Diaspora; BOOKER T. WASHINGTON: THE LIFE
AND LEGACY, aired on Westinghouse Television; FREDERICK
DOUGLASS: AN AMERICAN LIFE, aired on the Central Educational
Network; BLACK POWER IN AMERICA: MYTH OR REALITY?, aired
on PBS; and STILL A BROTHER INSIDE THE NEGRO MIDDLE CLASS,
which aired on the National Educational Television Network and
won the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film Festival, and
was nominated for an Emmy. The latter two documentaries profiled
successful African Americans working in professions which, historically,
had not been associated with African Americans.
For the stage, Greaves directed, as well as co-produced with
Paul Robeson, Jr. and Joseph Papp, the celebration of Paul Robeson's
90th birthday at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway in 1988. The
multimedia theatrical event featured a host of celebrities,
including Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Christopher
Reeve, Ossie Davis, Christopher Plummer, Toni Morrison, Max
Roach, and other notables, and The Dance Theatre of Harlem
Greaves began his career as a professional actor, playing the
lead in the Shubert Production, A YOUNG AMERICAN. Between
1946 and 1952 he was a featured actor on Broadway, on television,
and in films. He was featured in the motion picture LOST
BOUNDARIES starring Mel Ferrer, Beatrice Pearson and Canada
Lee, co-starred in SOULS OF SIN and played the romantic
lead in MIRACLE IN HARLEM. He was also a featured actor
in the Broadway stage hit LOST IN THE STARS, written
by Maxwell Anderson with music by Kurt Weil, which starred Todd
Duncan and was directed by Rueben Mamoulian.
A long-time member of The Actors Studio in New York, in 1980
William Greaves was honored, together with Robert DeNiro, Jane
Fonda, Marlon Brando, Arthur Penn, Sally Field, Rod Steiger,
Al Pacino, Shelley Winters, Dustin Hoffman, Estelle Parsons,
and Ellen Burstyn among others, with the StudioÕs first Dusa
Award. Along with his film production work, he taught acting
for film and television for the late Lee Strasberg from 1969
to 1982 at the Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. During
this period he, along with film directors Elia Kazan, Arthur
Penn, and Lee Grant and actors Herbert Berghof, Shelley Winters,
and Eli Wallach, occasionally substituted for Mr. Strasberg
as moderator at the Actors Studio. A member of the StudioÕs
board of directors, he currently moderates sessions at the Studio
along with Estelle Parsons, Lee Grant, Eli Wallach, Harvey Keitel,
Al Pacino, Ellen Burstyn and Arthur Penn and is a member of
the Actors Studio auditioning committee.
In addition to producing films, Greaves presents his films,
conducts workshops and speaks about independent filmmaking and
the filmmaking process for media professionals, actors, directors
and the general public at universities and cultural centers
in the United States and abroad. He has toured with his films
in India, China, East and West Africa, Japan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia,
Malaysia and the West Indies. A former Vice President of the
Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers, he has served
as a judge on numerous film panels in America and abroad. Among
them are, national Emmy Award panels, the panels of the Sundance,
Hampton, and San Sebastian Film Festivals, and the Dore Schary
Awards. He is a member of the Arts Advisory Committee of The
Princess Grace Foundation and is the Chairman of its film awards
panel.
In addition to the production of documentaries, television programs,
and feature films, his company, William Greaves Productions,
Inc., distributes its own library of educational films and videos
to television and cable systems, universities, colleges, libraries,
cultural organizations and schools throughout the country and
abroad.
Greaves lectures and gives informal talks on independent filmmaking,
the African-American experience in films, as well as his own
career as a filmmaker, at universities, libraries and other
educational and cultural centers throughout the U.S. an abroad.
To arrange a lecture, contact Louise Arthur at (800) 874-8314.
William Greaves is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who
in Entertainment in America and Who's Who in Black America.
For more information, contact Louise Arthur at :
WILLIAM GREAVES PRODUCTIONS, INC.
(800) 874-8314
WmLGreaves@aol.com |
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