Directed By: Rita Davern & Melody Gilbert
Written By: Melody Gilbert
Documentary Feature
USA, 74 minutes
It’s a family reunion … what could go wrong?
Plenty, as we soon learn when Rita Davern exposes an ugly reality at the heart of a family legend. Her family members have always been proud to say that their great grandparents once owned Pike Island, a beautiful piece of land in Minnesota. But when Rita relates what happened to the people who lived there before, some family members react with understanding, others with arguments and anger. Rita’s attempts to understand what happened and why leads her on a journey that requires facing the complicated legacy of westward expansion in the United States. Along the way she meets Ramona, a Dakota educator.
What Ramona’s ancestors experienced because of U.S. government policies puts faces and names on this story. Rita listens and learns. She wants to find a way to put something right. We learn the value of finding and facing the past by watching her journey.
Festivals & Awards:
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival – Best Of Fest
We Come In Peace Film Festival
Moldox International Documentary Film Festival For Social Change
preceded by:
Reparations 
Directed By: Gregory G. Allen
Written By: Gregory G. Allen
Cast: Ed Delia, Nefertiti Warren
USA, 12 minutes
A Jewish Holocaust Survivor agrees to be interviewed by an African-American doing research for her grad thesis on reparations. He cannot grasp any similarity between restitution for descendants of slaves versus those he’s received from Germany. As her questions unearth his secrets the bond between them deepens.
