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Carole Mikita reporting Sundance filmmakers are hoping to benefit from the Hollywood writer's strike, especially those who are premiering documentaries. One first-time director traced her family history, making a horrific discovery about slavery.
Katrina Browne took a personal journey to find answers about a part of history all Americans should know but don't. Her film, "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," follows the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history, her ancestors.
Bristol, R.I., the home of upright New Englanders is also the home of the DeWolfs, the largest slave-trading family in American history. This was a horrifying discovery for a first-time filmmaker.
Traveling to the slave forts of Ghana and the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba, she came to grips with her ancestors but then discovered how many other northern families were involved. "Almost everybody I talked to when I say, 'So, did you learn about this in high school or college?' People say, 'No.' I mean, the myth of northern innocence and southern guilt is very deep-seeded," Browne said.
Browne contacted 200 family members to help her with the film. Only nine answered, one of them a genealogist who has written a book about their research. "I didn't know how deeply we would be going into issues of race and how deep the system of racism is embedded in this country and how much we've inherited from the past. And so, that was surprising and ultimately enlightening for me," author Thomas Norman DeWolf said.
Browne and DeWolf say their projects shine light on the past because a deep mistrust still exists between races in America. "Embrace the things we fear in order to become more awake as human beings, more empathetic with each other and our circumstances, rather than just being afraid all the time. I think that that's my hope, let's talk," DeWolf said.
The film has screenings Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Park City, Salt Lake and at the Sundance Resort. PBS will also air "Traces of the Trade" this summer, and Tom DeWolf's book, "Inheriting the Trade" is in bookstores and available online now.
