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35-655: Filmmaker William Greaves ' 1972 documentary Nationtime , narrated by Sidney Poitier , covers the National Black Political Convention. An 80-minute restored version was released in 2020 with funding from Jane Fonda and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association . This article related to the politics of the United States is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This civil rights movement –related article

70-403: A "network". It put together a weekly five-hour package of television programs , distributing them primarily on kinescope film to the affiliated stations by mail. By 1956, ETRC had 22 affiliated stations, expected to grow to 26 by March 1957. The programming was noted for treating subjects in depth, including hour-long interviews with people of literary and historical importance. The programming

105-484: 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. 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

140-447: 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

175-584: A frequent collaborator on his projects, going so far as to even produce his documentary on Ralph Bunche. They had three children. Between 1969 and 1982, Greaves taught film and television acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. 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

210-459: A grant from the Ford Foundation 's Fund for Adult Education (FAE). It was originally a limited service for exchanging and distributing educational television programs produced by local television stations to other stations; it did not produce any material by itself. In the spring of 1954, ETRC moved its operations to Ann Arbor , Michigan , and on May 16 of that year, it began operating as

245-647: A special homage at the first Black American Independent Film Festival in Paris. In 2008 the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival honored him with its Career Award. [1] 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. National Educational Television National Educational Television ( NET )

280-1115: A tumultuous opening during the first few tapings, the NET network promoted Greaves from co-host to executive producer of the show. Greaves ran the show until 1970 winning an Emmy award for himself and the show in 1969. In 1970, after working on Black Journal for three years, Greaves opted to leave television to focus on film making. In 1971 he released a film titled Ali, the Fighter , which focused on Muhammad Ali 's first attempt to regain his professional boxing heavyweight title. Greaves then went on to produce and make films for various commissions and government agencies, including NASA and The Civil Service Commission . After this, Greaves produced numerous works, including From These Roots , Nationtime: Gary , Where Dreams Come True , Booker T.Washington: Life and Legacy , Frederick Douglass: An American Life , Black Power in America: Myth or Reality? , The Deep North , and Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice , which

315-466: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . William Greaves William Garfield Greaves (October 8, 1926 – August 25, 2014) was an American documentary filmmaker and a pioneer of film-making. After trying his hand at acting, he became a filmmaker who produced more than two hundred documentary films, and wrote and directed more than half of these. Greaves garnered many accolades for his work, including four Emmy nominations. Greaves

350-576: Is a former American educational broadcast television network owned by the Ford Foundation and later co-owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . It operated from May 16, 1954, to October 4, 1970, and was succeeded by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which has memberships with many television stations that were formerly part of NET. The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) provided funds for cataloging

385-581: Is what NET would have been reduced to. The Ford Foundation, interested Educational Television Stations , and President Johnson supported the recommendations of the Carnegie Commission in the Public Broadcasting Act, which was signed into law on November 7, 1967. The Public Broadcasting Service ( PBS ) began as an entity in November 1969, with NET continuing to produce several programs and to be

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420-512: The 1966 World Festival of Black Arts , a celebration of both African and African-American culture. In 1969, following soon after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. , public broadcasting syndicate National Educational Television (a direct predecessor to the modern-day PBS ) began to air a show called Black Journal with a mission to present news by African Americans, for African Americans, and about African Americans. After

455-701: The American Negro Theater . In 1948, Greaves joined the Actors Studio and studied alongside the likes of Marlon Brando , Julie Harris , Anthony Quinn , Shelley Winters , and others. During this time, he undertook a number of roles on the stage and in the theatre, but eventually grew dissatisfied with the roles in which he was being cast. Miracle in Harlem (1948) was one of the films he appeared in during this period. He also appeared in Souls of Sin (1949), one of

490-580: The BBC into the United States, starting with An Age of Kings in 1961. It increased its programming output to ten hours a week. Most NETRC network programs were produced by the affiliate stations because the NETRC had no production staff or facilities of its own. NETRC also contracted programs from independent producers and acquired foreign material from countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Yugoslavia,

525-601: The Carnegie Foundation to conduct a study on the future of educational television. The Carnegie Commission released its report in 1967, recommending educational television be transformed into " public television ". The new organization would be controlled by the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting (a corporation established by the federal government ) and receive funding from the government and other sources. Under this plan, funds were to be distributed to individual stations and independent production centers – which

560-541: The National Film Board of Canada . After six years working in various stages of production from director to editing, Greaves found himself behind the camera as director and editor of a film called Emergency Ward , which focused on the goings-on of a hospital emergency room on a Sunday evening. As the 1960s saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement , Greaves returned to The United States to participate in

595-574: The NET collection, and as part of an on-going preservation effort with the Library of Congress , over 10,000 digitized television programs from the non-commercial TV stations and producers spanning 20 years from 1952 to 1972 have been contributed to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting . The network was founded as the Educational Television and Radio Center ( ETRC ) in November 1952 by

630-648: The USSR, France, Italy, and West Germany. Starting from 1962, the federal government took over the FAE's grants-in-aid program through the Education Television Facilities Act. In November 1963 NETRC changed its name to National Educational Television , and spun off its radio assets. Under the centerpiece program NET Journal , which began airing in the fall of 1966, NET began to air controversial, hard-hitting documentaries that explored numerous social issues of

665-403: 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

700-456: The day such as poverty and racism . While praised by critics, some affiliates, especially those in politically and culturally conservative markets, objected to the perceived liberal slant of the programming. Another NET produced program begun in 1967, Public Broadcast Laboratory , produced similar complaints. In 1966, NET's position as a combined network and production center came into question when President Lyndon Johnson arranged for

735-404: The film goes on, the various film crews start to grow irritated, as they come to perceive that Greaves is an incompetent and sexist 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

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770-705: The film took him ten years to make. The final product was edited down from an initial cut of seventeen hours to two hours for the PBS show American Odyssey. The final project, narrated by Sidney Poitier , sought to bring the name of Ralph Bunche back into the public lexicon as Greaves felt he was an important, yet forgotten, political figure, one important to African-American history and the Civil Rights Movement. 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

805-607: 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

840-424: 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

875-501: The last race films , which saw him sing and act. Realizing that most of the parts he could play were stereotypes and derivative due to racism prevalent throughout American culture at the time, Greaves looked into African-American history. Seeing that his opportunities would be limited were he to continue to stay in America and focus on his planned course of acting, Greaves tried his hand at movie making, electing to move to Canada and study at

910-459: The main source of the controversies surrounding NET. Instead, local stations and outside suppliers would provide programming for the system, a model that endures to this day with PBS. In early 1970, both Ford and the CPB threatened to cut NET's funding unless NET merged its operations with New York City-area affiliate WNDT . NET agreed to do so. WNDT's call sign was changed to WNET on October 1, 1970, as

945-537: The many venues where they have been played. 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

980-406: The name of the network. NET's production of NET Journal and Public Broadcast Laboratory continued to be liabilities amid accusations of partisanship funded by the government. Eventually, Ford and the CPB decided to shut NET down, to be replaced by PBS as the network distributing programming to stations, but, unlike NET, it was not directly involved in production matters, which had been perceived as

1015-591: The ongoing discourse regarding African-Americans and their place in society. Based on his work on Emergency Ward , he was hired by both the United Nations and the film division of the United States Information Agency (USIA) to make several documentaries, the two most acclaimed of which were Wealth of a Nation , an examination of personal freedom as a key boon to America's strength, and The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1968), which documented

1050-880: 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. 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

1085-449: 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

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1120-474: The television industry as "bicycling"). The center's headquarters moved from Ann Arbor to New York City in 1958, and the organization became known as the National Educational Television and Radio Center ( NETRC ). The center became more aggressive at this time, aiming to ascend to the role of the U.S.' fourth television network . Among its efforts, the network began importing programs from

1155-524: Was also noted for being dry and academic, with little consideration given to entertainment value, a marked contrast to commercial television . Many of the shows were designed as adult education, and ETRC was nicknamed the "University of the Air" (or, less kindly, "The Bicycle Network", both for its low budget and for the way NET supposedly sent programs to its affiliates, by distributing its program films and videotapes via non-electronic means such as by mail, termed in

1190-541: 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. 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

1225-780: Was narrated by Nobel Prize in Literature and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison . Greaves' 1972 documentary Nationtime centered on the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, and was narrated by Sidney Poitier . An 80-minute restored version was released in 2020 with funding from Jane Fonda and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association . In 2001, Greaves released one of his most ambitious works Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey . According to Greaves, between attempting to secure funds and researching countless old manuscripts, photos, and newsreel footage,

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