NEW ULM — The Grand Center for Arts and Culture is hosting a special screening Thursday of the 2020 documentary “Stories I Didn’t Know.”

The documentary was created by Rita Davern and Melody Gilbert. The film follows the journey of a Minnesota woman, Rita Davern, who is exploring her family’s past. Part of her family history is connected to Pike Island, a piece of land at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Pike Island was once owned by Davern’s descendant, but in researching the land she was troubled the land had originally belonged to the Dakota people.

Davern’s has trouble reconciling how her family could be tied to the legacy of the nation’s westward expansion and why this aspect of her family history was never told before.

As she explores how her family benefitted from the removal of the Dakota people, she meets Dakota educator and activist Ramona Kitto Stately, who helps put names and faces to history and explains how people are still impacted after generations.

Davern and Stately will attend the screening of the documentary and hold a question-and-answer session following the film.

Charlie Leftridge, The Grand’s executive director, said the center has been interested in partnering with the New Ulm Film Society to start hosting screenings again.

The Grand has hosted other films in the past, and with larger public gatherings allowed, it was the right time to hold a screening with an audience.

Leftridge said it also allows The Grand to show the community a greater variety of art and art forms. He said The Grand embraces several forms of art, and film is just as deserving as any other form.

“Stories I Didn’t Know” seems like an appropriate starting point for cinema, because the film’s connection to Minnesota history, and it is also a way to recognize women filmmakers during Women’s History Month.

The screening starts at 7 p.m. on March 31 at the Grand Center for Arts & Culture. The event is free and all are welcome.