The Living Consequences

John Bell of Ebb Pod Productions has created a map of the United States, showing the locations of selected past and future screenings of Traces of the Trade:

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Traces of the Trade has been named the best documentary in the “Courage in Filmmaking” category for 2008 by the Women Film Critics Circle.

Gender played a central role in our discussions of race and privilege during the filming of Traces of the Trade, even though this issue did not appear in the finished film. So I think that this award, by an organization promoting the voices and perspectives of women in film, is a particularly fitting tribute to the work that Katrina Browne and everyone involved with the film has done.

The awards ceremony will be broadcast live on Wednesday, December 31 at 11am on WBAI-AM (New York) and streamed online at wbai.org.

On Friday, I’ll be in Newport, R.I. to participate in a panel discussion on “The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Rhode Island.”

I’ll be speaking about the Rhode Island slave trade and the example of the D’Wolf family of Bristol, R.I., who were the nation’s leading slave traders. My fellow panelists will be Jim Campbell of Brown University, who will discuss what Brown has uncovered about its own connections to slavery; and Keith Stokes, of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, who will talk about the lives of enslaved Rhode Islanders.

The panel will be held on Friday, June 6, at 4:00pm at the Colony House, Washington Square, Newport, R.I.

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Several of us from Traces of the Trade attended the White Privilege Conference in Springfield, Mass. over the past few days, where we offered a screening and discussion of the documentary and solicited feedback.

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

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The bicentennial of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade will be commemorated at a service of liberation at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City on Sunday, January 13.

Traces of the Trade, which is being released in conjunction with the bicentennial, will be represented at the service through resource materials prepared by the Diocese of New York, and Tom DeWolf, the author of Inheriting the Trade, will attend the service.

The service is being sponsored by the Episcopal dioceses of New York, Newark, Long Island, and New Jersey, as well as various Episcopal church offices and organizations.

My cousin, Tom DeWolf, has written a memoir about the journey which ten of us undertook in 2001 to retrace the steps of our slave-trading ancestors and to explore the legacy of the slave trade today.

That book, Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History, about the legacy of Senator James D’Wolf and his family, will be published by Beacon Press in January.

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