Have you been looking for a reason to take a trip to upstate New York this weekend? Look no further — here’s the perfect opportunity to see a great film in one of the prettiest towns in the region.
Katrina Browne’s Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North will have a special sneak-preview screening at the indie arthouse cinema Upstate Films, in Rhinebeck, New York, this coming Saturday, June 14, at 1:30 p.m. The screening is free, and will feature a Q&A with Traces co-producer Elizabeth Delude-Dix. Rhinebeck is located about two hours north of New York City.
In the film, Browne and nine other descendants of the DeWolf family grapple with their ancestors’ legacy as the largest slave trading family in U.S. They embark on a journey to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, Traces of the Trade offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide.
If you’ll be in Rhineback for the event, you’ll also have a chance to see another POV film that Upstate will be screening: Yung Chang‘s Up The Yangtze is about the Three Gorges Dam Project, the largest hydroelectric dam project in history — and life along the Yangtze River, which it will change forever.
How far would you travel for a great film? Let us know below!