LI filmmaker searches for his roots in 'Lee and Liza's Family Tree'

Filmmaker Byron Hurt, 53 — who was born in Smithtown and raised in Central Islip — not long ago grappled with a question: He obviously knew where he was from, but where did his family come from? That extended family is huge — some 300 members dispersed around the country, and not just on Long Island — which compounded his perplexity.

Another challenge: There are no extant records beyond the two oldest known ancestors, Lee Hurt Sr. born in 1863 and Liza Waller Hurt born in 1867.

Hurt, a veteran documentary producer (last year's “Hazing” and 2007's “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats,” which both aired on "Independent Lens"), saw both a challenge and potential film. The latter arrives Wednesday on "Nova" (WNET/13, 9 p.m.) as "Lee and Liza's Family Tree," a deep and fascinating dive into a far-distant past where the written record and DNA trail come to an abrupt end. With the help of two cousins, Jandra Bonner and Renard Rogers, his search took him to a pair of small Georgia cities, Eatonton and Milledgeville, some 80 miles southeast of Atlanta. It's there where things get really complicated.

The following was edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about yourself.
Born and raised on Long Island, and went to Central Islip High where I was quarterback on the football team that won the League 3 championship in 1987 — we beat Huntington — then went on to Northeastern majoring in journalism with a concentration in radio and TV, where I was exposed to a really great documentary filmmaker as a senior, Marlon Riggs [producer of 1989's "Tongues Untied, who died in 1994]. He's my inspiration.

How did your family get to Long Island from Georgia?
Both my parents, Jackie [who died in 2007] and mother Frances, are from Milledgeville and followed my great uncle, Dave Hurt Jr., who had moved here from there. He was an entrepreneur out in Bay Shore and Brentwood, a pioneer and trailblazer in our family who left the South to escape racism.

Without giving too much of anything away, "Lee and Liza's Family Tree" is not exactly conclusive. Why?

That is the point that I wanted to emphasize. Our journey reveals how difficult and challenging it is for Black families to find information prior to the end of slavery. It's really, really hard. I've heard of some families that have succeeded, but in the end, we learned what many, many Black families learn — it's an arduous process and sometimes frustrating.

Impossible?

I don't think so. It just requires a long-term commitment, uncovering and turning over a lot of different stones. What is also really important is oral history. Older family members die out, and they take that history with them. We were able to learn a lot from our own family members that corroborated the historical records, and even DNA. But if you haven't documented the history they know, it becomes much much much more challenging.

Had you sought the old records of slaveholders?

It's something we wanted to pursue but we could never confirm who the owners were. There is also some family speculation that Hurt was not Lee's original last name. Often after emancipation, many freed Black people took on the name of another family member, or someone they respected — or it could have even been the name of another slave holder because that person was kind to them. That makes it even more challenging.

In the film, you almost make a plea for more Black Americans to submit DNA samples to help in their own search, and to help others. But there has been historic mistrust, right?

There's a lot of mistrust and fear — for what the tests may reveal, and they don't know what the information will be used for. And history has not been kind to Black people when it comes to science. But we worked with a geneticist who believes there is a higher degree of accountability in science now. Not that racism doesn't exist but if we want to make some of these familial connections that go back generations, then we have to submit our DNA so we can increase the information in our DNA pool.