The Living Consequences

The Los Angeles Times has a review out about films exploring the subject of teenagers and race at the Sundance Film Festival.

The films covered include Prom Night in Mississippi, about the practice of holding racially segregated high school proms in Charleston, Miss.; Don’t Let Me Drown, a drama about racial and other tensions in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001; Push, a brutal yet hopeful examination of the cycle of poverty and despair in Harlem; and Toe to Toe, a drama about racial prejudice set at an elite private school.

Prom Night in Mississippi is perhaps the most shocking of these films, especially for those previously unaware of the ongoing practice of racially segregated proms in smaller towns in the Deep South.

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Since Sundance ended over the weekend, there have been two more prominent reviews of Traces of the Trade.

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In this post, I want to discuss, and link to, the various reviews of Traces of the Trade which have come out during the Sundance Film Festival. I intend to cover the good, the bad, and the ugly, and to offer a thought or two in response to the reviewers.

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I attended a screening of Li Ying’s 2007 documentary Yasukuni this afternoon at the Sundance Film Festival, with (and thanks to) my cousin Holly.

Yasukuni is a moving examination of issues surrounding the Yasukuni shrine in Toyko, exploring the shrine’s significance from the perspective of a variety of Japanese and non-Japanese voices. Li Ying is a Chinese-born director living in Japan for many years, and Yasukuni is competing at Sundance in the foreign documentary category.

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My cousin Katrina, who directed Traces of the Trade, was on a panel at Sundance this afternoon on filmmaking and being “Black in America.”

The panel was hosted by film critic Elvis Mitchell, who collaborated on The Black List, now playing at Sundance, and also included actor and filmmaker Danny Glover; Melody Barnes, who works in policy on Capitol Hill; actor, musician, and comedian Nick Cannon, starring in this year’s American Son; and Orlando Bagwell, the documentary filmmaker who hosted our panel on public outreach yesterday.

The panel was an engaging, wide-ranging, and often entertaining exploration of a variety of serious issues confronting black filmmakers and those interested in making films about the black experience in the U.S.

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Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North had its world premiere this evening before a sold-out crowd at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

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I’ll be blogging from the Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 17 – 27, in connection with Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, which has its world premiere in competition on Jan. 21.

Since I’m appearing in a documentary at Sundance, I’ll be focused on events and developments involving the film. So I don’t generally expect to be blogging about the other films being screened at the festival, nor about the undoubtedly interesting aspects of daily life in Park City, Utah during Sundance.

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Today, January 1, 2008, marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the U.S. slave trade.

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Traces of the Trade will have its world premiere on Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 21, 2008, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Members of the film cast and crew will be on hand for the premiere, and there will be a panel discussion earlier in the day with noted experts on slavery and race.

I’ll refrain from posting too much about the flood of press coverage generated for Traces of the Trade by its acceptance for competition at Sundance.

By far the best coverage, from our perspective, was David Halbfinger’s New York Times article about the Sundance lineup. The story, which emphasized the trend towards films from an individual perspective (“political subjects dealt with in human terms”), led the Arts section that morning. Halbfinger mentioned Traces before any other film — and prominently ran one of our favorite photos, the cover shot on Tom’s book, as the first of three photos from the films.

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