"I was impressed by the great turnout for every screening I attended. The parties were also fun, and showed that St. John's has a large, warm, and supportive film community."

- Laura Colella, Filmmaker, Providence, RI

21st Annual
October 26 - 30, 2010

The Films

Expansive Grounds

Venue: The Rooms Theatre
Date: Friday, October 23, 2009
Time: 9:00 pm - 10:30 pm

Director/Réalisateur: Gerburg Rohde-Dahl
Producer/Producteur: Gerburg Rohde-Dahl
Writer/Scénariste: Gerburg Rohde-Dahl
Country/Pays: Germany
Running Time/Durée: 66 min

There are many films, and there always will be, about the Holocaust, and many of them are strong and worthy. But EXPANSIVE GROUNDS is a stunningly unique take on the horrors of that extended event in its meditative approach to the 20th century’s most shocking historical truths. German filmmaker Gerburg Rohde-Dahl bravely explores her family’s own complicity in the Nazi regime while she chronicles the assembling of the huge and conspicuously in-your-German-face memorial in the centre of Berlin – conceived by an American architect and largely driven by a Jew. Not content to leave things at that, she then interviews those who experience the memorial once it has been erected – the uneasy, the defensive, the tormented, the guilty. EXPANSIVE GROUNDS is an absolutely fascinating film about many things, the Holocaust being only a part of what’s going on here. How does a country remember an event of this scale? And what are the effects of such a confrontation with the past? This film is as much about art and symbols as it is about history and tragedy. That’s why we love it.