When people talk about throwing the cocktail party of their dreams, this is what I imagine they mean.

On a summer evening in 1972, a pivotal generation of Harlem Renaissance artists and intellectuals gathered at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. For over three hours, this extraordinary group - many of whom had not seen each other in fifty years - reminisced, critiqued, argued, laughed, and drank while wrestling with their place in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape.

Filmed “by legendary filmmaker William Greaves and completed fifty years later by his son David,” this may represent the greatest collection of Black excellence ever captured on film. Eubie Blake’s comment, “Being here with all these intelligentsias, I’m afraid to open my mouth,” reflects exactly how I’d feel.

Read more about the film and William Greaves (an artist I was, sadly, unfamiliar with until now).

This is a film we’d excitedly build an event around when I was co-chair for Black@Apple—historic, illuminating, joyous. I hope someone at Apple is already making the necessary phone calls. (And please invite me if it happens!)

Reviews: New York Amsterdam News, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, Rotten Tomatoes (100%), Metacritic (93/100).