A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

*Please join us for a post-film discussion on Saturday, November 21st, following the 3:00 p.m. screening. The discussion will feature panelists Maria Howell, B.E. Noel, Jermaine Nakia Lee, and will be moderated by Dr. Portia M. York.

Maria Howell has appeared in hit TV shows such as (Lifetime’s), “Army Wives”, and Marc Cherry’s, “Devious Maids”. Eric Kripke and J.J. Abrams’ apocalyptic, “Revolution”, and “Aquarius”, starring X-Files’ David Duchuvny, both on (NBC), and “Criminal Minds”, on (CBS), alongside Joe Mantegna. She has also guest starred on “The Resident” (FOX), and “Delilah” (OWN). Theatrical credits include, “The Blind Side”, “Addicted”, starring Sharon Leal and Boris Kodjoe, “Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, as Seeder, and “Christmas Wedding Baby”, by Award-Winning Writer/Director Kiara C. Jones. She also stars in Writer/Director, Shea Sizemore’s “The Next Day.” In addition, she recurred in Bounce TV’s, “Saints & Sinners” as Lt. Hawkins, and as Ms. Sumner is the Oscar nominated film, “Hidden Figures”. She also worked with Eric Close and Kristin Chenoweth in the Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie, “A Christmas Love Story”. Maria also utilizes her vocals as a voiceover artist, on numerous radio and TV commercials, video games, narrations, not to mention her all-time favorite thing…animation.

Currently, Maria appears in a recurring role on the hit daytime soap, “Beyond the Gates”. She plays Tracy Tyler, a member of singing group, The Articulettes, alongside Tamara Tunie and Bonita Brisker, rounding out the singing trio.

“NOEL”, B.E. Noel is president of NOEL ART LIAISON INC, a fine art advisory service with connoisseurship in 20th- and 21st-century African American artists, working across genres and mixed media, including painting, fine art graphic, textile, sculpture, and photography.  As a servant leader, she has been a valued trustee to The Mint Museum of Art, The Arts &  Science Council, The Penland School of Art, and The Souls Grown Deep Foundation. She has served as a juror for Artists in Residency programs at McColl Center for the Visual Arts and The  Harvey B Gantt Center’s Black Carolina Artist Residency.  

An indomitable ‘cultural worker,’ Noel works behind the scenes, donating books to the museum library to ensure access to historic African American art texts. Or donating ephemera,  anecdotal information, time, and resources to enrich exhibitions, collections, and scholarly presentations. She has influenced the permanent collections of major institutions by facilitating major gifts to the National Museum of African American Art + Culture, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Nasher Museum at Duke University.  

Over the course of a generation, she has built relationships with national and international gallery colleagues, academic scholars, curators, and collectors, and has exhibited and championed the foremost Black artists of the time. The cumulative arc of her roles as gallerist, cultural influencer, artist advocate, and passionate art enthusiast helped secure their place in the canon of American art. And Noel’s impact continues to reverberate today.

Dr. Portia M. York is a Charlotte-based fiber artist, educator, and scholar whose work explores identity, well-being, and the intersection of mathematics and fiber arts. She has been developing her crochet practice since 2009, building on skills first learned at the age of ten at a youth summer camp in inner-city Boston.

Dr. York founded York Creative Education Group and serves as a Fiber Arts Professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University, with prior teaching experience at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Urban Education, a Master of Business Management, and a Master of Advanced Crochet Stitches and Techniques certification.

Her academic and creative work focuses on urban education, arts integration, and the role of the arts in STEM and STEAM learning. Her artistic practice emphasizes the therapeutic benefits of crochet while merging mathematical structures with visual storytelling. Dr. York has taught crochet to youth and adults in Charlotte, Santa Fe, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Haiti, Guatemala, and the Bahamas. Her work has been widely exhibited and engages audiences through its dynamic presence and commitment to honoring heritage, community, and creative expression.

*This screening celebrates the life and legacy of acclaimed filmmaker, director, and editor William Greaves, born on October 8, 1926, in New York City. Renowned for his groundbreaking contributions to documentary filmmaking, Greaves is best known for Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), Nationtime (1972), and Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (2001). He remained an influential figure in American cinema throughout his career. William Greaves passed away on August 25, 2014, in Manhattan, New York City, leaving behind a lasting cinematic legacy.