YouTube's popularity notwithstanding, it is not true that just because you have filmed something means that other people will want to see it. The documentary "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North" is a prime example of someone making a film with her heart in the right place, but with very little actual purpose. It might as well be a home movie that you show only to relatives.

The filmmaker, Katrina Browne, is descended from the De Wolf family, which at one time was the most prolific slave-trading family in America. The town of Bristol, R.I., today worships one of the early De Wolfs as a demigod, the locals conveniently disregarding the fact that their town was the hub of the slave trade in the North, and that all of De Wolf's fortune came from the suffering and degradation of enslaved Africans.

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Grade: C

Not rated, probably PG for a little mild profanity

1 hr., 26 min.