HALLOWEEN PARADE captures the spirit of a beloved, iconic institution – New York at its most subversive, outrageous, and creative: the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. For the past forty years, the parade’s charismatic leader, Jeanne Fleming, has transformed it from a local pageant populated by giant handcrafted puppets to a world-famous event where hundreds of thousands convene to celebrate artistry and self-invention, and confront the mysteries of death and life – if for only one night. 

The parade is created each year far from the buzz of Greenwich Village, at Rokeby, a grand but shopworn estate on the Hudson River, two hours north of New York City. A forty-three room mansion built for the ruling elite in the early 1800s, Jeanne has lived and worked there for over fifty years due to the singular largess of her best friend, Ricky Aldrich. A descendant of the storied  Astor and Stuyvesant families, Ricky is at once the courtly gentleman landowner and the overall clad handyman – and the only who can operate the mansion’s ancient, byzantine heating system.

Since the 1960s, the 400 acre Rokeby complex has been radically transformed into a scruffy beehive of artistic creation by artists, visionaries and eccentrics, many of whom came to visit and wound up living on the grounds for decades. Without Rokeby, there could be no Halloween Parade.

But the inevitable sense of time’s passing slowly encroaches. A foreboding sense of uncertainty and change lingers in the air. Now in her late seventies, Jeanne considers who will assume the mantle of leadership for the parade, a daunting logistical and creative undertaking. Ricky, 84, faces the health challenges that come with age, and wonders what the next generation has in store for the property. As Jeanne muses, “You never know what is going to happen. The dancing skeletons lead the parade because they've just left life and they know how important it is to dance and play together.” The time to dance is now.

 

HALLOWEEN PARADE is directed and produced by Peter Miller (MARCELLA, AKA DOC POMUS, SACCO AND VANZETTI) and Renée Silverman (REFUGEE KIDS, SOSÚA: MAKE A BETTER WORLD), award-winning documentary filmmakers and lifelong Halloween enthusiasts. Executive Producer Seymour Licht is the author of Halloween Underground, an acclaimed photography book featuring Halloween celebrants on the New York City subway. We are honored to have been welcomed by the Halloween Parade and Rokeby communities to document their lives and work over the next year.