TV REVIEW : A Filmmaker’s Search for His Father Raises Larger Issues

“What happened to the fathers?”

Filmmaker Marco Williams’ question to his Aunt Sally haunts his diary-like film “In Search of Our Fathers” (on “Frontline,” at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15; 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24). Her answer, like so much else in his quest to find the man responsible for his existence, is vague and unsatisfying: “They separated and moved out.”

Williams, who tracked his relatives by film and video camera for seven years without ever seeming to cause a family row, has made a film purely out of his control and dictated by events. If, for instance, he doesn’t come face to face with the man named James Berry whom Williams has only heard as a disembodied voice over the phone, the film is about the impossible distance between men and women, fathers and sons. If Williams meets Berry, though, does that turn the film into a fable on bridging those gaps?

Not necessarily. Perhaps by its nature, “In Search of Our Fathers” is, like Aunt Sally’s comment, indeterminate. Unlike her, though, Williams is at least groping toward some meaning, trying to figure how it is that so many young black men like him are raised in “houses of women,” and how some end up on the street while others like himself end up at Harvard.

Underlying Williams’ own personal journey is a difficult questioning of black males’ responsibility for the boys and girls they bring into the world.

A measure of his difficulty is his repeated trips to Paris, where his mother, Winnie, lives, to pry open the lid of a past she’d rather forget. Eventually, she remembers (sometimes, ironically, when his tape recorder isn’t working), but even here, it isn’t clear to what end.

Williams has his small, unexpected triumphs, but he realizes that they lack the catharsis of a life change. At the same time, though, he also realizes the importance of family and fathers--a message Williams didn’t search for, but simply discovered.