TV REVIEWS : ‘Remember This’ a Tale About Race Films of ‘40s

Who were the original Spike Lees? In the new PBS “Wonderworks” movie, “You Must Remember This” (at 6 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28), a family secret opens the eyes of a couple of teen-agers to the history of African-Americans in filmmaking.

Robert Guillaume plays loving Uncle Buddy, a movie buff who owns a barber shop and lives with nephew Joe (Tim Reid), Joe’s wife Brenda (Vonetta McGee) and his teen-age grandniece Ella (Maria Celedonio), a school basketball star.

The arrival of a mysterious trunk changes Buddy into a morose loner, and when Ella and her best friend, Alphonso (Vonte Sweet), sneak a peek, the contents reveal that Buddy was a director of “race” films in the early ‘40s.

Struggling to understand why he concealed his past, Ella and Alphonso launch an investigation. The two young teens are shocked to discover the demeaning way African-Americans were depicted in most Hollywood films and the color line that kept black filmmakers in obscurity or, as in Buddy’s case, humiliated them when they tried to exercise artistic vision.

The film, directed by Helaine Head, with a teleplay by Daryl G. Nickens, unevenly shifts among basketball, relationships and viewer education, but among its strengths is the depiction of a solid, caring family and the friendship between Ella and Alphonso.

Oddly, Guillaume, who has earned kudos for roles as diverse as the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” and his Emmy-winning show “Benson,” seems miscast. His transition from nice guy to crank is awkward and he looks far too young to have been making movies 50 years ago.