Anne de Mare

Academic Year 2026-2027
Black Film Project Fellow
Anne de Mare in front of a gray background looking at the photographer

Anne de Mare is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her work embodies a deep commitment to projects that celebrate the transformative power of the human spirit, where the individual experience illuminates the face of society as a whole.  Most recently, Anne produced and edited Once Upon a Time in Harlem (2026), a documentary feature based on archival footage of a legendary gathering of Harlem Renaissance luminaries filmed by William Greaves in 1972 and directed by his son David Greaves. That film was screened earlier this year at both Sundance and Cannes and will be released theatrically in the fall. Earlier works as Director / Producer include the Emmy Award-winning The Homestretch (2014), which explores the realities of youth homelessness in inner city Chicago; Capturing the Flag (2018), which follows three voter protection lawyers during the 2016 presidential election; and Asparagus! Stalking the American Life (2006), which explores the relationship between asparagus farmers in western Michigan and the changing global economy and which was the winner of the W.K. Kellogg Good Food Film Award as well as Audience Choice and Best Documentary awards at festivals across the country. Anne de Mare was also Co-Producer of the Peabody Award-winning feature Deej (2017), an intimate portrait of a brilliant non-speaking autist directed by Robert Rooy.  

William Greaves’ Memories of the Harlem Renaissance Archive

Anne de Mare’s fellowship project is William Greaves’ Memories of the Harlem Renaissance Archive. It will activate over 60,000 feet of historic 16mm footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 through a searchable audio-visual resource designed for scholars, artists, and the general public. Centered around a legendary cocktail party at Duke Ellington’s townhouse that Greaves himself engineered, this self-reflective and historically significant footage explores the role of the artist, the value of art in society, and the divine alchemy that led to one of the most vibrant periods in modern cultural history, the Harlem Renaissance.  The fashionable guests arriving to a cocktail party at the Harlem brownstone of Duke Ellington in 1972 are among the most influential artists and thinkers of their generation, the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.  They included artists Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Ernest Crichlow and Romare Bearden, composers Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, actor Leigh Whipper, poets Arna Bontemps and Frank Horne, writer George Schuyler, historian John Henrik Clarke, librarian Regina Andrews, activists Richard B. Moore and Louise Patterson, theater impresarios Irvin C. Miller and Abram Hill, and photographer James Van Der Zee. William Greaves’ remarkable footage is at the heart of the 2026 documentary feature, Once Upon a Time in Harlem.