Press release on visit to Cuba

Posted March 18th, 2010 by James DeWolf Perry
Category: News and Announcements Tags: Cuba, D'Wolf slave-trading, Freedom Schooner Amistad, James DeWolf Perry, Katrina Browne, Traces of the Trade, Tulaine Marshall

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 18, 2010

En español

Katrina Browne, Producer/Director, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North
Executive Director, The Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery
kbrowne@tracesofthetrade.org o: 617-349-0019          c: 617-290-5275
Ms. Browne will be in Cuba from March 22-30, so may not be reachable then.

Marga Varea, Events and Development Director, The Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery mvarea@tracesofthetrade.org o: 617-349-0019          c: 617-710-5436

The Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery is pleased to announce that three representatives of the 2009 Emmy®-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North will be traveling to Cuba with the Freedom Schooner Amistad next week. We are honored to be able to hold the Cuba premiere of the film during the Amistad’s visit.   The ship is visiting Cuba from March 22-31 as part of the United Nations commemoration of March 25 as the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.  For the press release from Amistad America please see: http://www.amistadamerica.org/content/view/1994/257/.

Traces of the Trade (Sundance 2008; POV/PBS 2008) chronicles Katrina Browne’s discovery that her ancestors from Rhode Island were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.  As Browne and nine cousins retrace the Triangle Trade from Rhode Island, to Ghana, to Cuba, they uncover the hidden history of Northern complicity in slavery and grapple with the persistence of the black/white divide today. Havana was a regular stop on the D’Wolf “slaving” route—for selling Africans at auction—especially during the illegal period.  Rhode Island and Cuba were central players during the period after the U.S. ban of 1808 and British ban of 1807.  James and George D’Wolf eventually developed five sugar and coffee plantations on the island in order to control all sides of their “vertically integrated” triangle of commerce.

The Traces of the Trade premiere will be on Saturday, March 27 at Casa de Africa in Havana, hosted by Miguel Barnet, a preeminent Cuban cultural leader and ethnographer.  This will be the first visit of family members since filming for the documentary took place in 2001 (which involved working with a Cuban crew and Cuban scholars).  During next week’s visit, the team will also seek to locate two more D’Wolf plantations and perhaps meet Afro-Cuban descendants of people who had been enslaved there.  Joining Producer/Director Katrina Browne in Cuba will be James DeWolf Perry, VI, a cousin in the film, an expert in the transatlantic slave trade, and a direct descendant of James D’Wolf (patriarch of the slave-trading dynasty, and a U.S. Senator); and Tulaine Marshall, a leader in Boston and in the community and youth development sectors nationally.  Ms. Marshall serves as partnership coordinator between the film and Amistad America and facilitates use of the film for inter-racial dialogue.

Katrina Browne: “We are deeply moved to be part of this historic visit of the replica ship Amistad to Cuba.  The successful revolt of Sengbe Pieh and the other captured Africans, in the waters off of Cuba in 1839, took place against a backdrop that our family now knows about all too well.  It’s important to understand the details of that de-humanizing global economy that built so many nations.  Its reverberations are still with us.  We hope this visit will be a chance to deepen the dialogue.”

Relevant Film Credits:

Katrina Browne: Producer/Director/Writer
Alla Kovgan: Co-Director/Editor/Writer
Jude Ray: Co-Director/Executive Producer
Elizabeth Delude-Dix: Co-Producer/Executive Producer
Juanita Brown: Co-Producer
Director of Photography: Liz Dory
Production Sound Mixer: Jeffrey Livesey
Original Score: Roger C. Miller
Animation: Handcranked Productions

Cuban Crew:

Line Producer: Boris Iván Crespo
Unit Production Manager: Santiago Llapur
Second Unit Camera: Ariam R. Grass
Second Unit Sound: Ricardo Pérez Ramos
Gaffer: Luís Manuel Escuela
Electrician: Ovidio Gastón
Translator: María Teresa Ortega
Travel Guide: Raul Izquierdo

Cuban experts interviewed for the film:

Maria del Carmen Barcia
Natalia Bolivar
Carlos de Lara
Zoila Lapique (appears in final film)

The visit of the Traces of the Trade team to Cuba and the partnership with the Amistad for the Caribbean Heritage Tour has been generously supported through grants from the Wynecote Foundation and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.