A most unusual documentary that delves into one family’s buried roots and well-kept secrets. Director Alston enjoyed a childhood not uncommon for white middle-class families of Durham, North Carolina. But one situation stuck in his mind; why were all of the other Alstons in his grade school classes black? Now a young gay man living in New York, Macky travels back to his ancestral home to answer that nagging question. The result is a humorous, fascinating unfolding of a family’s personal history that is past mystery, part history lesson, and part detective story. He suspects that these black Alstons of North Carolina are actually his relatives, the result of relations between his descendents and the slaves they once owned. He investigation takes him to family reunions (his white one as well as the black Alstons’), city hall, graveyards and even Philadelphia and New York where some black Alstons moved. All in an effort to uncover his true family tree. Intensely intimate, search of a man’s true bloodline and the characteristics that unite both family clans.
