What’s Happening? Film Series: William Greaves' “The Fight”

Join us for an evening of curated films from the Reserve Film and Video Collection and discussion with special guests.

In the first months of 1971, William Greaves, a documentary filmmaker based in New York, accepted an offer from promoter Jerry Perenchio to make a feature film of the upcoming boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali.  Greaves immediately pulled together three film crews with twelve cameramen to follow Ali, Frazier, the coterie of promoters and trainers, and to record public sentiment about the upcoming bout.  The resulting film, a Direct Cinema epic which not only showed the finesse and brutality of boxing but questioned the nature of sports promotion in relation to the Black men who are competing, was rejected by the producers.  They wanted marketable content.  Greaves complied.  And yet, he kept working on that original vision of a film that could document much more than boxing.  

On November 19th, we are screening the result of that vision, William Greaves' THE FIGHT (1973).  This rarely seen director's cut is the product of The New York Public Library's 6-year restoration of the film in partnership with the Criterion Collection and The Film Foundation, with funding from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. 

What's Happening is a film series dating back to 1972 that centers on new and historic films in the Reserve Film and Video Collection at the Library for the Performing Arts. Screening a selection of curated titles from the collection—including documentaries, animations, and even films never commercially released—the series provides information on timely and public topics, in order to spark conversation with the audience and with special guest panelists.

Photo Credit: Film still from the 2026 restoration of THE FIGHT (1973), courtesy of William Greaves Productions.