From: HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Movie Review: In Search of Our (Black) Fathers
Date: 11 Nov 1992 16:01:51 -0800
Organization: Stanford University
NNTP-Posting-Host: morrow.stanford.edu

Thought you aspiring stud puppies and other more committed folks
concerned about issues of black manhood and black womanhood would
be interested in hearing about this movie which is opening soon
in San Francisco.  Just remember, this is not my review.  I may
interject by the use of parentheses.  It was penned by an S.F.
Chronicle staff writer.

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FILM MAKER DOCUMENTS PAINFUL SEARCH FOR HIS DAD
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BY MARIAN ZAILIAN
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER


"In Search of Our Fathers," a documentary by Marco Williams (a
beautiful, dreadlocked brother) which opens today (November 11,
1992) at the Red Victorian (a film collective much like that of
the crew that runs The Roxie Theatre) for a week, is a haunting
film about the ties between parents and children and about
Williams' quest for his own identity through a search for the
father he never knew.

The 70-minute film explores, via 4 generations of husbandless
mothers, a modern-day dilemma:  Can a black woman teach a black
boy to be a man?  And what kind of men--and fathers--can
fatherless boys become?

Williams, now a filmmaker in Los Angeles (Stevie Stovall
territory), was a senior film student at Harvard University when
he began this project, shortly after learning the name of his
father.

WHAT TO CALL HIM

"In Search" opens with Williams telephoning the man, James Barry,
and wondering what to call him.  Jim Barry?  Mr. Barry?  Jimbo?
His goal is to arrange a visit with him.  Polite and unemotional
at first, Barry finally becomes annoyed when Williams says he has
taped their conversation in hopes of making a film about their
reunion.  "I'd rather be opposed to it," the chilly voice says.
Although the meeting never took place, the phone call left
Williams obsessed with wanting to know he'd had a childhood with
no father.  To find the answers, he researched four generations
of his own family.

Williams' great-grandmother was widowed.  In subsequent
generations of women in the large Philadelphia family, all,
including his own mother, became pregnant at 17 and 18 and reared
their children without men.

"No one ever talked about sex," said Williams, "They didn't
anything about birth control or even abortion."  And, in the
film, one cousin underscores the fact by pointing out, "Bad girls
didn't get pregnant, they knew what to do.  It was the good girls
that got pregnant."

And when they did, their men quickly disappeared, leaving, in the
case of Williams' family, four successive generations to raise
their children alone.

"The film is about me being persistent, almost to the point of
being a pain in the butt," said Williams, during an interview at
The Chronicle.

"When I asked, my mother didn't want to relive what had happened.
What my dad had referred to, simply, as a 'one-night stand.'

"But for her it was not simply being 18 and loving somebody and
being hurt by him.  Particularly because there were so many
expectations of her.  She was a college student, the first in her
family, and had to drop out."

(I know a sister who experienced this as well.)

But Williams' mother does not fit the stereotype of the
downtrodden, unwed mother.  When her son turned 18, she decided
she wanted to learn French cooking and went off to Paris for 12
years, working in a traditional French restaurant.  She is
currently the cook at the Harvard Faculty Club.

(Right on, my sister!  Never give up your dreams, no matter how
old you are!)

"I learned in the course of making the film that right before she
went to Paris, she decided to try and find my father, whom she'd
had no contact with in 18 years.  But she felt that in moving to
Paris she was reaching a plateau in her own life and that she had
to tie up the loose ends.  So she went through an elaborate
process of tracking him down."

When she phoned Barry in Ohio, she told him that they had a son
together.  He remembered her, and gave every indication that the
next time he was on the East Coast, he was going to look up his
son.

"He never did," said Williams.  "And my mother never mentioned
him at the time.  Five years later, when I was breaking up with
my girlfriend and about to graduate from Harvard, I went looking
for him--my mother had finally given me his name and phone
number.

"Perhaps it was nonsense but I felt in order to be a man, and
ultimately, potentially, to be a father, I needed to get to know
my own father."

SEVEN-YEAR DELAY

But it took seven years from his first phone call to that
meeting.

"We spent an afternoon together, and he spent almost the entire
time being very distant, unavailable, denying that he was my
father (typical; this is usual pathetic behavior from men).  Even
though, by the end of the visit, he started saying things like
'You handled this very well' displaying a kind of tacit paternal
pride, I did not feel love or affection for this man.  Towards
the end, he was talking about me staying an extra night.  I
didn't."

In late May of this year, Williams had to return to Ohio, not far
from where his father lived.  There he learned "that he had
passed away in 1989, two years after we had last met.  He never
saw the film."

The 10-year journey--from the first phone call to completed film-
-eventually gave Williams the answers to many questions, but not
necessarily the ones he had begun by asking.

"I learned many things about my myself and about my family.  I
learned a sense of pride, a sense of roots.  I discovered that
what is really critical is the love and nurturing and that exists
in abundance in my extended family.

"I don't agree with the Dan Quayles of the world who say the
father has to be there.  I don't agree with the (Daniel) Patrick
Moynihans who suggest there is a pathology of the black community
that causes disintegration of the black family.  Family is
critical to survival in society, yes, but we have to look at the
factors that affect the black community like education,
opportunity, employment.  You can have a nuclear family and still
have a disintegrated family with children who do not become
contributing members of society.  So I don't buy the simple
notion that if there's no father you don't have a family."

To Williams, the "scary" thing about his film is its indictment
of the myth that men are needed.  "It is possible to raise
disciplined children without a father.  It is possible to keep
them from being juvenile delinquents.  It is possible to stay off
welfare.  It is even possible, as my family did, to aspire to and
to uphold American middle-class, puritanical values."

END


(I'd also like to add that in certain African tribes, the seat of
power is not male, but female.  Men had to succeed to leadership
roles through the matrilineal line.  Perhaps we are harkening
back to that connection in some of our inherited relationships.
I agree that men are not needed all the time, but sometimes they
are.  Which means that a new idea of black wo/men relationships
is long overdue.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american