Tim Travers Hawkins thought he had found the raw material for a small art project when he visited the former Catskill Game Farm in 2022 and discovered a collection of 16mm film rolls in an abandoned cafeteria building.

The reels were “the first of many” he found, Travers Hawkins recalled at the world premiere of “American Zoo” at the Tribeca Festival in New York City on June 4. The British filmmaker first thought the footage might become a simple art project. The more he explored the forgotten archive, the more he realized the story was much larger.

“I then met the descendants of the people who had worked there, and the story just kept giving us more and more layers. And then before we knew it we were cruising around in archives under the Berlin Zoo,” Travers Hawkins said.

“American Zoo” is the fifth feature-length documentary directed by Travers Hawkins, whose previous film, “XY Chelsea,” also premiered at Tribeca.

The film offers a thoughtful look at the Catskill Game Farm’s legacy in the region. It details the area’s history as a German immigrant enclave and its status as a vacation destination for Jewish families driving north from New York City. It traces the zoo from its hopeful beginnings in 1933 to its closure in 2006, which the documentary attributes to years of mismanagement and declining ticket sales.

But while “American Zoo” examines the Game Farm’s broader place in Catskills history, its central focus is the zoo’s surprising link to Nazi-occupied Germany.

The film tells the story of Heinz Heck Jr., a German scientist who joined the zoo in 1959 and was obsessed with trying to breed extinct animals back to life. Heck was particularly interested in reviving the aurochs, a large species of wild cattle that went extinct in Europe in the 1600s. The zoo kept his experiments hidden from regular visitors, and the breeding program resulted in serious birth defects in many of the animals.

Heck was continuing the work of his uncle, Lutz Heck, who had been close to Nazi leader Hermann Göring.

“Lutz, I mean, he was a fascist,” Travers Hawkins told viewers at the “American Zoo” premiere. “He definitely had fascist beliefs even before the Nazis came to power.”

Heinz Heck Jr., meanwhile, was “probably in the Nazi Youth,” Travers Hawkins said, “but I don’t believe he was a particularly strong part of the Nazi party.”

What struck Travers Hawkins was Heinz Heck Jr.’s apparent interest in improving his family’s legacy, and the unspoken agreement among Lutz Heck’s descendants not to discuss their older relatives’ Nazi ties.

“Everybody knew it, but nobody talked about it,” one of Lutz Heck’s nephews said in the documentary, a sentiment that echoes throughout the film.

The film also features an interview with Lutz Heck’s granddaughter, Margarete, a cell biologist who said she was shocked as an adult to learn about her grandfather’s Nazi background.

“It was a tough time to do that interview,” Travers Hawkins said.

Margarete was struggling with terminal cancer when she spoke with him and died weeks after the interview. Travers Hawkins said he was interested in how someone might wrestle with a family’s dark history near the end of life.

“I think I had a romanticized sense that you would sort of embrace the whole truth as you were passing away, but I feel like that wasn’t the case,” he said.

The film also contrasts Heck’s breeding experiments with more routine mistreatment of animals at the zoo. Travers Hawkins uses unearthed footage of the Lindemanns, the family that founded the Game Farm, capturing animals from the wild, including a clip of a large elephant being shot with a tranquilizer dart and collapsing to the ground.

The documentary also examines how the Catskill Game Farm sold animals to hunting ranches and shows, in one of its most disturbing montages, cattle from Heck’s breeding program being butchered for hamburger meat.

Heck’s experiments were extraordinary. The film suggests the Game Farm’s broader mistreatment of animals was, in many cases, common practice for private zoos.

During its 85-minute running time, “American Zoo” wrestles with how to reconcile the zoo’s dark behind-the-scenes history with the happy memories it gave generations of families. The film includes interviews with visitors who recalled feeding giraffes and zebras, and it details how the Game Farm helped support nearby Catskills hotels and restaurants.

“It was a wonderful place, and I think particularly the petting zoo, that stays in so many people’s memories,” Travers Hawkins said.

The former Catskill Game Farm is now operated as a hotel and campground, overseen by general manager Shawn Johnson. The 193-acre portion of the property at 300 Game Farm Road in Catskill has been on the market for several years, originally listed for $3.6 million before later being split into separate parcels.

Some animals still live on the property, though they are not as exotic as the elephants, rhinos, and kangaroos the zoo once featured.

Johnson said he met Travers Hawkins while walking goats on the property and gave him a tour.

“He found the old film there,” Johnson said. “He asked if he could have it, and I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, why not? It’s going to sit here and rot anyway, no one’s going to even look at it, so please do.’”

Johnson grew up a half-hour from the zoo and fell in love with the place long before he became its manager.

“I’ve been coming since ’77, it’s been my Disney World ever since,” he said.

Johnson attended the world premiere and was acknowledged by Travers Hawkins during the question-and-answer session. He said the film captured a complicated history.

“I thought it was great. I really do,” Johnson said. “I thought it brought to light a lot of things that people seem to forget about or don’t even know about. I think it did an excellent job of that.”

Michael Boyle is a contributing writer to The Overlook. Send correspondence to reporting@theoverlooknews.com.