In a deleted scene from James Cameron’s “Titanic,” Commander Harold Lowe (Ioan Gruffudd) returns to the site of the fatal collision between the British passenger liner and an iceberg, in search of passengers. “Is anyone alive out there?” he yells into the dark sea, now littered with suitcases, pieces of wood and frozen dead bodies. “Can anyone hear me?” the captain desperately screams. Suddenly he hears a faint reply in the distance. He and his crew row in the direction of the voice until they come across a pale Chinese man floating on a scrap of the ship. They pull him into the boat, saving his life.

This scene, which is based on the story of RMS Titanic passenger Fang Lang, anchors “The Six,” a documentary about the ship’s handful of Chinese voyagers. Directed by Arthur Jones and executive produced by Cameron, “The Six” is a methodical and roving investigation of the fate of six Chinese men who survived that cold April night in 1912.

Jones capitalizes on the mystery surrounding the ship to craft a thoughtful and suspenseful documentary about a relatively unknown part of the Titanic’s legacy. While “The Six” begins with the mammoth watercraft, it smartly moves beyond it to consider the historical reality that made finding these half-dozen men nearly impossible. It’s a clear-eyed examination of global racism and various nations’ anti-Chinese immigration policies, whose ramifications are still felt today.

The film opens with Steven Schwankert, a writer and editor whose research focuses on China, speaking to a group about how he became absorbed in the mystery of the Chinese survivors of the Titanic. The lack of curiosity about what happened to these men seemed preposterous to him, especially in light of the fact that the lives of the other 700-plus people who survived are incredibly well documented.

Schwankert sets out to rectify this by assembling a team of more than a dozen researchers across several continents to help him investigate the six lives.

An internet board post leads the team to Tom Fong, a man who claims to be a descendent of Fang Lang. They head to Janesville, Wisconsin, for an interview. “The Six” picks up considerable speed as the researchers realize they can, at least, reconstruct the life of one of the passengers. What follows is an intricate and fascinating narrative about identity, friendship and family. The documentary takes us from the United States to parts of China, where the story of the Titanic is popular but the details about its Chinese survivors are not well known. The researchers travel to rural provinces in China where they think these men grew up, and learn more about what they left behind.

Dreams of the opportunity to build a different life loom over many of the stories they hear, and what becomes increasingly clear are the limitations of written history. For many of the townspeople Schwankert and his team talk to, the stories they know have been passed down orally, and not in writing.

Jones and Schwankert also interview experts about the history of Chinese migrants in the United States and Britain and the racist immigration policies they faced in both countries. They speak to and spend a considerable amount of time with the descendants of the sailors, and these interactions reveal complicated and secretive family histories. With each conversation, “The Six” blossoms into a poignant story about these men, their families and their legacies.(SD-Agencies)