touristic intents documentary screening

Rappaport’s absorbing documentary poses a question: can a building be guilty? Centered on the never-completed Nazi resort of Prora, a 4-mile-long building made to house 20,000 vacationing working-class Germans, and used as a promise of leisure time for the masses and to strengthen sympathies for Nazi party.

After decades of abandonment, the massive edifice is now being redeveloped into apartments, condominiums, hotels, and a youth hostel. TOURISTIC INTENTS grapples with notions of place and identity in an era when the role of national monuments has become a defining issue of cultural memory. The resort of Prora stands as a lasting reminder of how buildings become vehicles for political ideology and myth-making throughout their lives. Is there an obligation to remember a building’s dark past?

Director Mat Rappaport in attendance with film and architecture scholars Sara Hall and Jonathan Mekinda Thursday, November 30 for a discusison following the screening.