The Living Consequences

One issue which came up frequently while filming Traces of the Trade was the importance of gender in our society, and the parallels between gender and race.

While there are, of course, many ways in which gender and race are not parallel, it was often instructive, in a group consisting solely of white people, to point to ways in which the men in the group shared privileges in our society which the women did not.

I plan to write more on this subject another time, but for now I want to point out a strikingly different post on the film’s acceptance into competition at Sundance. Melissa Silverstein writes, over at Women & Hollywood, about the women represented among the films in the Sundance lineup, including in Traces of the Trade.

In focusing on issues of race for the film, I think we tended to lose sight of the fact that our producer/director, Katrina Browne, is female, as were many of the key people involved in the film. And, as I suggested above, gender issues became central to many of the conversations about race we had, on and off camera, while making the film. This was totally unplanned, but I thought it was highly appropriate, and our discussions of gender certainly helped to inform our conversations about race and invisible privilege in our society.