How a 1972 Cocktail Party Gave Us the Best Documentary of the Year
Rolling Stone | 16.10.2026 20:00
The names fly at you fast and furious: Eubie Blake, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gerri Major, Leigh Whipper, Regina Andrews, Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, James Van Der Zee. They are poets and pianists, painters and photographers, journalists and salon hosts, mover and shakers, all of them sipping cocktails and chatting about days past. It’s 1972. Having borrowed Duke Ellington’s uptown apartment, filmmaker William Greaves (Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One) invited the remaining luminaries of the artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance for a reunion of sorts. Some are old friends. Some have not seen each other for decades. All of them made history north of 110th street that reverberated around the world.
