Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North has won an award, for “Best film/video documentary production,” at the 2010 Black International Cinema film festival in Berlin.

Traces of the Trade was directed by Katrina Browne, with co-directors Alla Kovgan and Jude Ray.

Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North and Ebb Pod Productions are pleased to announce the formation of a partner organization, the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery.

The Tracing Center has been formed by people who have long been involved in Traces of the Trade and in the use of the film for national and international outreach efforts involving the history and legacy of slavery. Their intention is to broaden and deepen those efforts and to develop related programming. This development will also allow Ebb Pod Productions to focus on its core mission as a film production company.

For more on the Tracing Center, please see its new web site at www.tracingcenter.org.

The Associated Press has a story out about a return visit to Cuba by two DeWolf descendants featured in Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.

The story, “US family finds traces of slave-trade past in Cuba,” covers a just-completed trip to Cuba by Producer/Director Katrina Browne and historical consultant James DeWolf Perry, both of whom also appear in the film, along with Tulaine Marshall, who works with them at the Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery.

On the trip, the trio visited the site of Mount Hope, a Cuban slave plantation owned by Perry’s fifth-great grandfather, James D’Wolf, the leading slave trader in U.S. history. They also held the Cuban premiere of Traces of the Trade, spoke at a number of public events, participated in activities surrounding the voyage of the Schooner Amistad to Matanzas and Havana, and reunited with Cubans who were in the film, advised the project, or were part of the Cuban crew during filming.

For more on the A.P. story and the visit to Cuba, see Perry’s blog, The Living Consequences.