The camera was seldom far away when Adrian McElwee was growing up. His father, Ross McElwee, had spent decades making documentaries about his own life, and his son appeared throughout that vast archive. In Remake, the filmmaker returns to those recordings after Adrian’s death from a fentanyl overdose, trying to understand what the images preserve and what they never captured.

McElwee will introduce the film at a special screening at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem on Tuesday, November 10. The screening begins at 7 p.m.

Known for his 1986 documentary Sherman’s March, McElwee draws on home movies made by both father and son. At the same time, a long-running effort to turn Sherman’s March into a fictional Hollywood movie provides an uneasy counterpoint: one project tries to remake the past for an audience, while the other attempts to recover a life.

What emerges is not simply a portrait of grief but a question about documentary filmmaking itself. A camera can record years of family life and still fail to tell its owner everything he wishes he knew.

Remake screens November 10 at 7 p.m. at Maysles Documentary Center, 343 Malcolm X Boulevard. General admission is listed at $15, with reduced admission at $7. Tickets and event details are available from the theater.