American Zoo

In its world premiere at Tribeca Festival 2026, Tim Travers Hawkins outdoes himself in his riveting expose American Zoo, a story of dark and light about America’s first private zoo. The documentary builds to many essential thematic points. One theme asks to what extent do private companies commit untoward practices and illegal violations to enhance their profitability by avoiding public scrutiny and governmental interference? When the business involves families and children shouldn’t they be trusted to keep a mandate that puts ethics and care first? Or does success and money trump all ethical and moral considerations? Unfortunately, in the last twenty years and especially during the current administration the latter question seems rhetorical.

Investigating the private zoo inspired by the American Dream

Proving this theme, one feature of his complex, fact-based documentary, Travers uses extensive interviews and found valuable material, including reels of home movies, archived documents, books and photos, and photos from family legacies. With these, he opens up a new avenue of exploration into upstate New York’s Catskill Game Farm. The documentary slips under the joy, peace and fun of the amazing place and the owners’ striking idea (at the time) to allow animals to roam free and enjoy their lives.

But underneath the clean, white American brand, lurked an association with Hitler’s criminal crony Hermann Göring. For those unfamiliar with the treacherous, infamous German, Hermann Göring was a high-ranking Nazi official and founder of the Gestapo. Those who wore the cap or uniforms with the skull and crossbones were instrumental in moving forward with the genocidal extermination of Jews and other undesirables in the Eastern European concentration camps during WW II.

Did the owner know one individual in particular had close ties with the Nazis and Göring? By the time folks thought to ask questions, the owner and key players had died. Only the children remained. One daughter (a scientist in a family dynasty of German zoologists named Heck) knew of the darkness. She went on the record about her grandfather while she was dying of cancer in Scotland. Using her interview, and interviews with the zoo owner’s daughter, zookeepers, workers, spouses and researchers, an enlightened view of the Catskill Game Farm emerges.

The film’s structure

Travers Hawkins structures his fascinating film in three sections. But first, he introduces the Game Farm through period radio and TV ads and videos of those who daily visited the farm which was a success because it fostered love of animals and stoked interest in exotic animals that were facing extiinction.

A Wonderland of Animals in the Heart of the Borscht Belt

If you ask any veteran New Yorker who vacationed upstate, they may tell you about the Catskill Game Farm. It was a lovely first-of-its-kind private zoo that expanded its grounds and added exotic animals never seen before to the delight of families and children that numbered into the millions before the Catskill Game Farm fell into disrepair and closed in 2006.

America’s very first (and largest) privately owned zoo was opened by German immigrant Roland Lindemann in 1933.h A host of zookeepers and employees who lived and worked there in community for the love of animals kept the Game Farm going for 73 years. Though the pay was low, they enjoyed their time there and even offered to buy it when Lindemann’s daughter found the business grew harder to turn a profit. But at the peak of its success, families who visited found its peaceful, lovely surroundings heavenly. Little did they know it held a dark side which would have given them pause.

A Turning Point

Lindemann loved animals, but came about procuring them for his zoo sometimes in an untoward way (poaching). During the process he understood how some species were going extinct because of hunting parties slaughtering the beautiful creatures for wasteful fun, not even using their bodies. One way to counteract this was through eugenics, conserving their DNA, and breeding programs to prevent animals going extinct.

So for the good of conservation and preservation in 1959, Lindemann invited Dr. Heinz Heck from Berlin to the Catskill Game Farm. He made him zoo director and gave him free reign to establish a genetics program which attempted to research a way to prevent future animal extinctions. In another pathway, Heck and his father, who would come to visit summers, worked on a program to reverse engineer animals that had an important place in German history and folklore. As it turns out, in the heart of an area that was a summer resort for those who had been through the horrors of the Holocaust, Heck was working on the genetics of animals that symbolized strength, heavily romanticized in the Nazi Party’s mythology. In other words if they brought back these mythic creatures, their “resurrection” would be a symbolic affirmation of the romantic ideals of Nazism which could never be extinguished.

The last third of the film

In the last third of the film, Travers Hawkins’ tie ins with the Heck’s (father and son) genetics and breeding program and the Nazi party are astounding. On the one hand, Heck and his grandfather had two successes. Travers Hawkins follows these details through interviews with Heck’s daughter and archived photos and materials. Also, the home videos are essential in telling the story of the research. The director follows the story to its tragic conclusion. Perhaps if the Catskill Game Farm had become a non profit, received grants from the government, the research would have continued under regulations and for the betterment of science and the planet. It was not to be.

American Zoo currently screens at Tribeca Festival. https://tribecafilm.com/films/american-zoo-2026