We've been keeping a close eye on our usual sources for news on Sundance deals ... and it's been s-l-o-w. Everyone seems to think that, after an unusually quiet weekend, the deals will start breaking any minute, with the reasons for the slowdown ranging from sellers asking for too much money, to buyers being unusually cautious about overpaying, the icy cold conditions freezing everyone's brain and power to negotiate, etc.

Here's good news for another documentarian, though: Katrina Browne's Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North, has been picked up by PBS for broadcast on their "POV" series, according to indieWIRE. In his review, Cinematical's Eric D. Snider noted that director Browne is descended from "the most prolific slave-trading family in America," and, as she became aware of her ancestors' misdeeds, she became guilty and wanted to do something to try and repair the harm that had been caused. She convinced nine family members (out of 200 invited) "to join her on a trip retracing their forefathers' steps."

It sounds like a potentially fascinating story, but, unfortunately, Eric felt that Traces of the Trade proves to be "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." Ouch! Well, the rest of us will have the opportunity to see it on PBS at some point down the road and can decide for ourselves. No word yet on an air date.

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.