AIFF2025: The Nazis Massive Thefts Of Art During WW II

[Note:  This is an AIFF2025 (Anchorage International Film Festival) post because I will discuss below Plunderer:  The Life And Times Of A Nazi Art Thief, a film shown at the festival.]

[Note 2:  This post has taken on a life of its own as I've been writing it.  It now seems to be about the role of art as a commodity in the Holocaust, but on a higher level, as what one of the interviewees in Plunderer said:  Art is one of the three major unregulated industries in the world:  art, arms, and drugs.  As I write this, I keep uncovering new twists and turns.  It's taking me a while to post this because I'm trying to articulate the most important of the twists and turns clearly.  I'm sure I'm muddling some and missing others.  But there is a lot to learn from studying how the Nazis systematically stole art during their rule over Germany and how the world has, for the most part, let it slide.  There are also lessons for today.]

The Beginning - Let's just assume there is no beginning.  We simply have to jump in somewhere and start discovering things.  And if we're observant, remember enough details,  and are lucky, we'll start to see how everything is connected.  If not, we'll end up with random facts and impressions which are too vague and disconnected for us to take any lessons from.

• I knew that the Nazis stole art.  What I didn't realize until recently, as I'm reading Susan Ronald's Hitler's Art Thief, is

how massive this undertaking was.  This was not simply incidental, opportunistic looting.  It was a highly organized, preplanned effort to scoop up all the great art held by European museums and by private collectors, particularly Jewish families with art collections.  

Organized at the highest level, under the auspices of the RBK (Reichskammer den Bildenen Kunst - or Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts), art dealers were sent across Europe to compile an inventory of artwork in museums but also in the private collections of wealthy Jews - paintings, sculptors, drawings - and other valuables including jewelry, tapestries, and even church altars.  And once the Germans occupied a country, these agents of Hitler and Göring went out like art vacuum cleaners to suck up the best items and send them back to several repositories. - for the private collections of people like Göring and Hitler and for great German museums. 

Art had already been on the German leaders' menu during in WW I.  After his victory, Hitler planned to open a museum in Linz, Austria, his home town, that would have the world's most spectacular collection of art.  But some was also for Hitler's private collection and also for Göring's.  And much was also used to raise needed foreign currency to fund Hitler's war.  There were elaborate work-arounds set up to overcome the Allies' official bans on looted art.  Some pieces were sent directly to dealers in England and the US, but much, maybe most, went through auction houses in neutral Switzerland.  

There were also issues with currency - the German Mark not being worth much in the Allied countries.  And conflicts with Hitler's edicts condemning degenerate art - modern, abstract works which included artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall.  But the work of these artists commanded high prices and, as I mentioned above, one of the objectives of this art looting was to raise foreign currency.  So while there were symbolic burnings of such art, most of it was diverted and sold.  I'd note that author Susan Ronald questions how any pictures of value were actually burned.

But as organized as this all was, the art historians/dealers who located and confiscated the art, arranged to get all the paperwork to remove the art from occupied countries, to transport it, and to get paid found  lots of ways to divert art works to either their own private stashes or to export and sell overseas.  

There were so many items - thousands and thousands - and various destinations within the Reich hierarchy that keeping track of every item was difficult.  

Again, from what I can tell, there were two main objectives of the Reich.  First was to gather the greatest collection of art anywhere to display when the Germans conquered the world.  (Hitler did start out as an artist.)  Second, was to raise foreign currency reserves to purchase armaments.  

There were four officially designated art dealers - Hildebrand Gurlitt (the main subject of Ronald's book); Karl Buchholz; Ferdinand Möller; and Bernhard A. Böhmer - who worked, nominally, under the RBK.  And they worked with many other art dealers and art historians to locate, confiscate, and fence art.

Pause to take a breath and figure out where we are

I'm telling you all this because until I started reading Hitler's Art Thief I didn't realize how organized and all encompassing this Nazi art theft was.  I probably should have.  Basically, I'd known that various heirs (generally Jews, or the heirs of Jews who had been send to death camps or forced to flee) had sued to get back individual works of art after (I believe) the piece showed up somewhere - generally in an auction catalogue or a museum.  

The Reich  had designated huge warehouses to store work.  And they even used salt mines toward the end of the war to store art works to keep the winning Allies from finding them.  

Most notably, there was Woman in Gold about the Beverly Hills dress shop owner who sues Austria to get back a painting stolen by the Nazis from her family in Vienna.  I've written about this film and personal connections to the main character.  Woman in Gold, as I recall it, focused mainly on the legal and political battle to get back that one painting.  I certainly did not get from that film a sense of the level of art plundering the Nazis did.  It may have been there, but it wasn't the focus of the film.  I did get a sense of how difficult it was to fight to get family property returned after the war.  How expensive the fight was and how long it took,  And how difficult it is to prove your family owned something when all your possessions are confiscated or you are forced to flee with just what you can carry.  

Anthony Doerr's book, and then the Netflix series, All The Light We Cannot See - includes

"A sergeant major in the German army who certifies and evaluates art, jewelry, and gems, Reinhold Von Rumpel is major figure in the novel."  (From Fandom)

The movie is about a museum worker who takes a famous diamond to keep it safe from Nazi plunderers and Von Rumpel's persistent pursuit.   

We even watched The Monuments Men, though I really don't remember much about it.  This was about the American art historians who came as government officials right at the end of WWII to find the art looted by the Nazis.

The Anchorage International Film Festival in December of last year (it's January 1, 2026 as I write, 'last year' for the first time referring to 2025 [It's January 4 as I continue to review and revise this post]) showed the film  Plunderer:  The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief.   This film focused on one particular art dealer, Bruno Lohse, who does appear in Susan Ronald's book, but plays a much lesser role.  While Plunderer shows us at the end the seven or eight pieces Lohse had hidden in a Swiss bank vault worth perhaps $100 million, the focus is on Lohse, not one of the four official Nazi art thieves, and not on the bureaucratic machine the Nazis created to steal the greatest artworks in Europe.  

[NOTE:  The movie PLUNDERER IS AVAILABLE ON PBS PASSPORT in two parts as part of the Secrets of the Dead series.] 

Plunder  came about, it appears, because the historian - Jonathan Petropoulus - who is both the narrator and a key figure in the documentary learned the Lohse was still alive and tracked him down.  Which he did several times.  He concludes that Lohse was using him to find out what he (and others presumably) knew about Lohse, and that Lohse lied to him regularly and with great charm. The film is probably an important piece of evidence that others can use as they paint the whole picture of this operation.  I doubt this movie would have been made if Petropoulus hand had his conversations with Lohse.  

Similarly, Hitler's Art Thief got written, according to the author by accident.  

"I was an investment banker specializing almost exclusively in the restoration of historic buildings and landscapes and their conversion to alternative use." (p. xv)  [Yes, I'm thinking that leaves a lot to interpretation.] There was another trigger - an inheritance of looted Nazi art as well.  

while on a trip to Zurich to meet a

"prospective investor and his personal bank manager . . .it was necessary to go to the bank's vault to verify the share certificates, certificates of deposit, jewels, and art." 

While in the vault, 

"I noticed that a sliding wall was slightly ajar.  I saw the fringes of what I believed was a nineteenth-century landscape painting and the letters "RLITT" labeled beneath the frame.  Rlitt?  Gurlitt? Could that be a painting by Louis Gurlitt, the nineteenth-century landscape painter?  I wondered aloud without realizing it.  The bank manager swiveled around suddenly and glowered at me, pushing the wall shut.  "No, That's the twentieth century Nazi art dealer," he huffed. (p.2) [Louis was the Nazi art thief's grandfather]

The manager realizes he's committed a serious blunder in the super secretive world of Swiss banking and blames Ronald for looking where she shouldn't be looking.  But at lunch, where the bank manager had a bit too much wine, he apologizes profusely for how he had behaved.

"The bank manager's groveling became so overwhelming that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.  It's not often a Swiss bank manager makes such a faux pas. 

So, I was mischievous and played on his sudden change of heart helped along by his nervous drinking.  I popped the searing question, mustering my best innocent voice, and asked if there was a twentieth century dealer called Gurlitt.  Was there ever! the bank manager exclaimed.  He wasn't just any art dealer - he was Hitler's art dealer.  Hildebrand Gurlitt was his name."

That's how the author, a woman specializing in appraising art, learned about Gurlitt.  

I find the title, Hitler's Art Thief, a bit misleading, because there were, as I mentioned above, four officially designated Nazi art thieves and many, many others who worked with or for those four. Bruno Lohse was one of the others.  

Another pause, to catch up on details to get a sense of the magnitude. 

It says 'Massive Thefts' in the title of this post.  How massive are we talking about?

Let's just look at the value of the stash of looted paintings the heir of Gurlitt still had in 2013, almost 70 years after the end of WWII.  

But first a bit about Hildebrand Gurlitt's family.

Hildebrand Gurlitt had two children, Cornelius (born 1932) and Benita (born 1935).  They both were children during WWII while their father was traveling Europe collecting paintings and they grew up with great art.  They both were told a story about their father that made him a hero saving art from the Nazis.  Ronald paints Cornelius, who was his father's heir, as a bright, but odd child and adult. Possibly on the autism spectrum. Hildebrand died in a car crash in 1956 without having passed on to his wife or his children what they'd need to know to liquidate the paintings when they needed to. Cornelius lived in his mother's Munich apartment  for 40 years after her death in 1968 with the paintings stacked in the apartment.  He never changed the name on the ownership, paid everything in cash, never paid income taxes, and never had a computer or used the internet.  

The magnitude.  Ronald writes:

"There were the original 1,407 artworks found in Cornelius's Munich flat, followed by some twenty-two further paintings in the possession of his brother-in-law, followed by another sixty-odd in Austria that burgeoned to over 250 fifty [sic] artworks.  Then, belatedly, there was the Monet found in Cornelius's hospital bag after his death.  By anyone's reckoning, the looted portion of the find must be worth somewhere around a billion dollars." (pp. 319-320)

This does not include other works that Gurlitt had stashed away in Swiss bank vaults like the one that Ronald stumbled upon accidentally that got her started writing this book.  

Nor does this count what the other three official Nazi art thieves managed to run off with. Or the other art dealers who worked with them. Nor the art work in Göring's and Hitler's collections or the works.  Nor the works they managed to export and were sold in auction houses or directly to collectors.  

Ronald suggests that getting valuable paintings was an underlying motive to send Jews to death camps

I hadn't thought about this.  Probably it went well beyond the paintings.  In the book and movie The Lady In Gold, if I recall correctly, we see the Nazis take over not just the art, but everything including the apartment itself.  This is mentioned also in Plunderer.  

The belongings of Jews were confiscated, in many cases, well before they were carted off to concentration camps.  Jews were forced to sell their household goods at very low prices.  I knew this in part because letters from my grandfather in Germany in the early 1940s to my father who had gotten to Chicago told of having to sell their furniture at pennies to the dollar.  In other cases, as with my step-mother, when she got out of work camps after the war and returned to her family home in Bratislava, neighbors were living in her the family home and other neighbors had different pieces of furniture and silverware. They said they thought everyone was dead.  In fact my stepmother was the only survivor in her family, but it also shows that people of Bratislava had a good idea of what happened at the camps.   

It was then my stepmother decided she needed to make her way to England.  And eventually the US.

This is some of the background I already knew when I read the following in Hitler's Art Thief:

"I want to impress on the reader that it is a gross misapprehension to believe that looted art is somehow a lesser crime of the Nazi era.  Attached to each artwork is at least one human tragedy and death.  Art is intended to unite people of disparate backgrounds in a combined cultural heritage that transcends national boundaries.  It takes many forms, as literature, music, fine art, film, and more.  It connects our souls.  The wholesale theft of art from museums, private individuals, libraries, and archives was highly calculated and well organized by the criminal regime of the Third Reich." (p.5)

She comes so close to articulating that the loss is not merely the personal possession of the artwork, but the cultural heritage of all humans.  She continues:

"Many Jews, Christians, atheists, and political opponents lost their lives because of their collections.  Those who somehow survived never recovered the bulk of their possessions - be they artworks, real estate, stocks, jewels, cash, or gold - giving rise to new laws, restitution departments at auction houses, and an entire insurance industry." (p.5)

Again, on a personal note, my mother, after filling out extensive paper work, eventually received Wiedergutmachung  payments.  The closest English word is reparations.  The German word literally means "make good again".  I didn't know anything about this when I was young and believe that there was some token compensation for the loss of the family house and business (a mens clothing store) and I understand there was something to compensate my mother for the loss of opportunity when she was no longer allowed to go to school and the further education she would have gotten.  She did get monthly checks until she died.  

I include this because unlike most countries that have committed heinous crimes against humanity, the German government did make attempts to acknowledge what had been done and in some way to compensate those who had everything taken from them.  But, of course, the millions who died in concentration camps never had the chance to apply for any compensation.  

I include this also to point out that I had personal family experiences that gave me more awareness of the holocaust than most people might have had, but I had never put so many of the pieces together to begin to understand the role that confiscating art and other property played in the Third Reich.  

Ronald goes on:

"Some artworks now reside as ill-gotten gains in museums across the world - perhaps in a museum in your hometown or where you live.  Much lingers beneath Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich [the street that holds Swiss banks with vaults protected by secrecy laws including the one vault where she first encountered the name of Hildebrand Gurwitt] and elsewhere in Switzerland.  Those who salvaged some of their heirlooms or riches remained deeply scarred, afraid, and guilty that they'd somehow survived.  Few returned to Germany, some returned to France.  They often passed on this guilt and shame to their children.  The looting of art deprived these families of a crucial link to their personal histories;  memories that remain dear beyond the value of the paintings - often mental pictures of the last time the dispossessed saw their loved ones alive." (p.5)

Other lingering issues raised:

Lack of accountability - most of the art dealers had few to no negative consequences.  Some, like Gurwitt spent time in detention while his case was examined.  But the American interrogators had various obstacles in Ronald's telling - lack of art expertise, poor translators, no access to critical files, and the State Departments loss of interest.  Gurliff was eventually let go. and as was clear above, he retained an enormous fortune in stolen art.  Ronald writes that that is also true of the other art dealers.  It was also true of Bruno Lohse (from Plunderer).  The focus went to Nuremberg and those involved in killing Jews (and others) in the concentration camps.  But even that tended to be focused on the top tier.  In a footnote on page 299, Ronald writes:

"Karl Wolff was rearrested in 1962 when the trial of Adolf Eichmann presented evidence that he was responsible for the deportation of Italian Jews to concentration camps.  In 1964, he was found guilty of the deportation of Jews to Treblinka and Auschwitz and the massacre of Italian partisans.  He was released in 1969."

US museums and art dealers, including the biggest ones (including Jewish dealers) knew who they were dealing with, looked the other way, and profited from the trade of illicit art

In the movie Plunderer there's a segment on the Ivy League educated curator of the Metropolitan Museum of art, Theodore Rousseau.  

 "Rousseau began his World War II service as an assistant United States naval attaché to the American embassies in Lisbon and Madrid, Spain. At war’s end he began service with the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) and was assigned to the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU). Responsible for uncovering information regarding Nazi looting, the ALIU was formed in 1944 to function as the intelligence component of the MFAA. Also assigned to the unit were Monuments Men Lt. James S. Plaut and Lt. Cdr. S. Lane Faison, Jr. After months of interrogating hundreds of Nazi officials and collaborators on the whereabouts of looted works of art, each of the three officers submitted in-depth reports regarding the three most important Nazi looting programs: the activities of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in France (Plaut), the collection of Adolf Hitler intended for his massive Führermuseum in Linz, Austria (Faison), and the collection of Hermann Goering (Rousseau)." (From the Monuments Men and Women website)

Lohse, according to Plunderer, got out of prison in 1950.  Then he contacted the three ALIU investigators who had interrogated him.  He gained traction with Rousseau who was now a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The link goes to a PDF - which you need to download to see - of two eulogies for Ted Rousseau on his death by Thomas Hoving, the director of the Met, and a curator, Margaretta Salinger.     

Paul Lohse (the art dealer subject of Plunderer) wrote to him after the war proposing to sell him art.  Jonathan Petropoulus, in the film, pages through a thick folder of correspondence between Lohse and Rousseau.  Petropoulus quotes Hoving calling the period of the 50s and 60s "the age of piracy."  As one of the Monument Men who interrogated Lohse - who spent time in prison for his Nazi era art wheeling and dealing - Rousseau knew that the art he got from Lohse was, at best questionable and at worst stolen.  Petropoulous knew he was buying stolen art.  Lohse's name was never or rarely in the paperwork of paintings he sold, but the film makes it clear that he was skilled at hiding behind middlemen. At one point in the film they say "in 35 (I'm not 100% sure of this number, but it's close) rooms in the Met, there's at least one stolen painting."

Petropoulus mentions a top art dealerships in New York Rosenberg and Stiebel and Wildestein and Company who dealt with Lohse. They assert that the Met has 44 rooms that have at least one painting purchased from the Wildesteins.   Looted paintings were scrubbed clean on the back so the ownership couldn't be found.  

Everyone stalled, for decades and even forever, the return of artworks to their original owners

This is clear if you follow any story of a family trying to retrieve stolen art.  The film Lady in Gold is a good example.  

NOTE:  I've reread lot's of the book several times.  And watched the movie again.  Each time more things fall into place.  So I don't expect too many folks to 'get' this post.  But at least maybe there will be a heads up note where you keep the Nazis and the Holocaust in your brain.  

And if you're a member of PBS - Watch Plunderer Parts 1 and 2.  

Why does this matter today?

Given that we now have a president, whose ex-wife said he kept a copy of Hitler's speeches next to his bed, and White Nationalists with swastikas rubbing elbows with the highest levels of government, we should pay attention.  Not necessarily about art.  Hitler was a would be artist.  Trump's career has been about putting up buildings with his name on them, and the schemes he uses to fund and build these edifices. He's also a master con artist and law avoider.  Characteristics he has in common with the Nazi art dealers who stole fortunes worth of art.  

But this is also about our inability to know everything and that's a big issue now.  Trump has broken so many norms, rules, laws, and articles of the constitution, it's hard to know where to begin.  Is there a hierarchy of sins?  

In this story there are so many issues and so many details to track down, that rumors and fantasies fill the spaces between the lines.  And often the truth, when we glimpse it, is worse than those rumors.  Where to begin?  Will only the most outrageous infractions get attention and the others slide?

For those who know little, read little, are not careful about their sources of information, it's easy to take a few stray facts and come to conclusions.  Conclusions that at best grossly simplify things.  At worst miss the truth by a wide margin.  

This whole exercise reminds me once again to be humble about what I know, to be careful about what I claim, and to let my readers know the sources of information I'm using.  

* For those who might question that statement, there's so much evidence you simply have to willfully disbelieve it.  Trump's first wife said he had a book of Hitler's speeches by his bedside.  His biggest financial backer (to my knowledge) gleefully gave a Nazi salute on stage, and White Nationalists, along with swastikas regularly pledge their support for Trump.  

And a side note:  Two pages (that comes to four sides) were torn out of the index of the copy of Hitler's Art Thief I got from the library.  Who does that?  Did they want the info on those pages?  They have a camera on their phone.  Did they need paper for something?  There wasn't toilet paper in the library bathroom? I'm sure there was something else they could have used.  Is this a plot by someone named in the book to hide something?  Check the book in your library to see if pages 369-70 and 377-8 are missing.  Probably not, because then they would have taken out the pages referred to in the index.

I'm going to post this, but I may proof it one more time in the next week to edit errors and typos, and to make points more clearly.  

Yes, Frank, I'm Still Here - Cold and Personal Hotspots

 Frank commented on the previous post that it's been ten days since my last post.  I hadn't realized it was so long.  

It's been cold, generally between +5˚F and -7˚F (-15˚C and -21˚C) and so it takes a little more energy and mental fortitude to go outside.  But I walked over to the University library (about a mile each way) to drop off some books that were due.  I was able to do some of that inside buildings.  About half outside.  I did enjoy seeing this book displayed in the new books section:   

I was clearly enjoying my 'right to be cold.'

Then there were other details to catch up on.  Paying bills and making year end contributions to organizations that are fighting to save our democracy, feed the hungry, etc.  

Our trip to Turkey got me into the world of eSims.  These are electronic Sim cards so you are getting data service in the country you are in, not using up expensive roaming from your home phone provider - in our case ATT.  Instead of physically replacing the sim card in your phone, you canto do it electronically via the internet and it automatically turns on when you land in the host country.  In learning about eSims I realized that there are eSims for the US, and in many cases they were significantly cheaper than local internet access and even phone service.  We settled on a company called Saily which worked fine. 

I have been doing battle with Alaska Communication Service (ACS), formerly Anchorage Telephone Utility (ATU) for a while.  Our internet speed is miserable (1 MBPS) and despite three years of promises of fiber, nothing has changed.  So, before our trip, I cut off our granherdfathered in landline/internet package and vowed to use eSim or find something better when we got back.  

It turned out I could use our ATT unlimited data and a personal hotspot with my laptop.  Bingo.

Well, not quite so fast.  I got a text from ATT that my 10GB per month limit for personal hotspot was

75% used up by the tenth day of our billing cycle.  I checked our bill - J does that bill - and it says unlimited data.  There's nothing on there about personal hotspots.  I went to ATT and talked to the guy I'd talked to before our trip to Turkey.  I liked him then and I still do.  He said that yes there was a 10GB limit to personal hotspot.  It wasn't on the bill, but it was in the contract which he brought up on his tablet.  We have an over 55 package, which he told me was only available for three months and adding 20GB (for a total of 30GB per month of hotspot) would be an extra $34 and I'd have to buy a different plan, though my wife could stay in the old plan.  No, I couldn't simply buy 20GB and patch it on the the plan, you have to buy a whole plan that has more GB of personal hotspot use. And because the over 55 plan was no longer available, I couldn't go back to it if I didn't like the new one.  

We discussed the eSim options. He told me he uses personal hotspot for his internet, and I left saying I'd check what was available before committing to the new plan.

Turns out ATT's $34 for 20GB is not a bad price.  But I was able to get 20GB through Saily for $23 for a month.  But that was a special, normally it's $30, which is not much less that ATT's $34.  But when I was looking for eSims for our trip, I saw that prices change rapidly and constantly.

You do have to go into settings and then the cellular section of your phone and add the eSim which I did.  It's not without obstacles, but it's not that hard.  And Saily has a good chat option that worked well when I needed it.  

After a day and a half I was down to 18.2 GB.  What was happening?  Turns out I was using the Saily instead of my ATT for my data on my phone.  So I've remedied that (back to the cellular section of settings and shutting off Saily when I didn't need it) and we'll see how long the original 20GB last.  I can still use the ATT for personal hotspot, but at a drastically slower speed - worse even than our ACS internet speed.  But knowing that I can plan.  For instance, opening this blogger page and writing here was reasonable.  But uploading pictures wasn't working, so I turned on Saily to do that, then turned it off.  (I know some of you are rolling your eyes and saying it's not worth all that trouble.  But I have a 1997 car with a tape deck, no heated seats, and no video for backing up and no hookup to charge my phone.  People are addicted to luxuries that didn't even exist 30 years ago and they are paying for them as well.)

It would be easier to just go with the old ACS, but even though we were grandfathered in to the landline/internet package, they kept raising the price.  The email addresses that had been free were now $5 a piece.  The free 100 minutes of interstate calls now was $5 a month too.  We never used that but they said it was part of the package and couldn't be waived.  Then there's the $25 late fee if you don't pay the bill by the exact due date.  No grace period any more.  While I was traveling I couldn't pay the bill, because when I went on line to pay, instead of their website, I got a page saying the country I was in (Tükiye) was blocked.  

And instead of sending me an email saying my bill is due in a few days, like VISA does and Chugach Electric does, they send that email the day after it was due.  The other utilities have grace periods and their late fees are either a percentage of the bill or much less than ACS's $25.  This is clearly deliberate.  If a thousand customers pay a $25 late fee, that's $25,000 a month, $300,000 a year.  I've asked to get the name of the CEO so I could write a letter.  None of their officers are on their website.   Wikipedia lists Matthew McConnell as the president and CEO and the parent company as ATN International. [They list the officers now, and the CEO is not Matthew McConnell]  They are owned by a Massachusetts  company - ATN International -  and the most I could get out them was that some of the officers live in Anchorage.  

So now I'm down to two emails with ACS.  I've set up substitute emails.  One is for this website.  The new one is listed in the right hand column.  And I got a $25 late fee charge for a $10 bill for the two emails!  It's called predatory and this sort of ruthless business is supported by the Trump administration which has taken off the limits to these kinds of charges that were introduced by Biden administration.  

I just have to go through the other alaska.net email so I can be sure I replace that address with the new one for organizations that need to contact me.  And I need to hear from.

And so, even if the personal hotspot adds an extra step or two to get my laptop connected to the internet, I think it's worth it (certainly it's much cheaper).  But also because the tech world is constantly changing our options and researching eSims before our trip enlightened me to this new option.  I feel like I'm only 10 or 20 years behind the times.

OK.  I guess I'll stop here.  I was going to skim over a number of other things I've been doing, but clearly I'm not good at skimming.  Often my titles get written after the post because I'm not sure what the post is going to cover.  The combination of cold and personal hotspots is a very accidental title, but I love it.  

So Frank, thanks for reminding me I needed to get back on here.  

Topics that got left out:

• Hitler's Art Thief
• Sunday solidarity meeting
• Chanukah party
• David Brown, author
• Gaining daylight after the solstice
• Flowers blooming inside 
• Replacing my lost VISA card
• AIFF2025 left over posts to write

AIFF2025: The Awards

 Notice that I didn't say, "The Winners."  Awards is a little better.  There are objective criteria, but if the technical quality is more or less equal, and the content is good, and the story - whether a narrative or a documentary is compelling and well told, then picking who gets an award and who doesn't gets subjective.  The topic is one you are interested in.  You 'like' the actors.  The story touches close to home.  

But awards play an important role for the film makers.  They can use them as evidence that people liked their film.  It gets the attention of other festivals and distributors.  

As  I went through the list, I've added a √ to the movies I thought were really good and I agree it was deserving.  But I didn't see all of the films, so no √ doesn't mean I didn't like them.  In fact, I think all the film makers - particularly those who completed features - have accomplished something noteworthy.  They've managed to pull together a story, a cast, a crew, funding, and pulled off, despite the odds, a full length movie.  That's like running a dozen marathons.  Even if there are flaws, it's still a huge achievement and my respect and gratitude goes out to all the filmmakers whose films we saw this last week.  

So with that preface, here's the email filmmakers got this morning from the directors of AIFF2025.

25th - ANCHORAGE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL WINNERS 

 

JURY AWARDS

 

Burt at guitar

Narrative Feature - Burt - Joe Burke    

 

Documentary Feature - Remaining Native - Paige Bethmann √

 

Made In Alaska [Narrartive] Feature - The Ladder - Emilio Torres  

 

Made In Alaska Doc Feature - K'etniyi: The Land Is Speaking to Us - Rory Banyard

 

Wáats'asdíyei Joe 
and Nayak'aq Yaahl
Yates

Made in Alaska Narrative Short - My Message To You -  'Wáats'asdiyei Joe Yates √

 

Made In Alaska Doc Short - Carving Lines - Dimitri Surnim

 

International Feature - The World Outside - Katrine Eichberger, Nikolas Mühe √

 

Humanitarian Award - Hidden Roots - Brad Hilwig √

 

Narrative Short - The Singers - Sam Davis 

Josefin Kuschela

 

Documentary Short - Greenland: Living with the Inuit - Josefin Kuschela 

 

International Short - Pierre West - Henrik Larson, Jakob Arevarn 

 

Anchorage Wolverines Sports Documentary Award - Bonnie Thunders: That Beautiful Moment - Corey Bayes 

 

Anchorage Wolverines Sports Short Documentary Award: Shaped By Land - Emily Sullivan 

 

Music Documentary: Goddess Of Slide - Alfonoso Maiorana

 

Music Video: Begin Again - Ava Acres and Matt Farren  tied with Ideal Distance - Danny Chandia 

 

Pilot: Bad Survivor - Alex Dvorak , Katie North 

 

iPhone Super Short  -  Mom And Max - Jade Song 

 

Animation Short: A Little Story About Forever - Max Romey  √

 

Katrine Eichberger and
Nikolas Mühe

Director of Narrative Feature: Katrine Eichberger, Nikolas Mühe - The World
Outside √

 

Director of Documentary Feature: Ryan Flynn - You're No Indian √

 

Director of a Narrative Short:  Chelsea Christer -  Out For Delivery

 

Carrie Lederer

Director of Documentary Short: Carrie Lederer - Wild Horses at the Door √

 

Actor in a Feature film - Laurence Shou for Rosemead √ and Burt Berger for Burt

 

Actress in a Feature film - Katrine Eichberger for The World Outside  √  and Renne Gagner for  I've Seen All I Need To See 

 

I've Seen All I Need To See
Team

Independent Voice Narrative - I've Seen All I Need to See, Zeshaan Younus, tied with Lockjaw - Sabrina Greco 

 

Independent Voice Documentary - Blood and Guts, Katie Green and Caryle Rubin

 

Reel World Impact Award: Comparsa, Vickie Curtis, Doug Anderson, Lesli Pérez and Lupe Pérez  √

Greg Rubner

 

Comedy Short:  What The Heck is Going On. - Greg Rubner 

 

Thriller Short: Hide - Brenden Hubbard

Explorer's Club Alaska Chapter Recognition Awards 

 

Exploration Documentary - The Bride of Mont Blanc - Grace T.S.P. 

 

Exploration Documentary -  In Search of the Arctic Fox - Zach Hellmuth

 

Exploration Documentary - Ashes of the Mountain - Joseph Lindley

 

Exploration Ethics Documentary - Special Recognition Award - Among Thieves -  Dr. Gino Caspari and Trevor Wallace √

Explorer's Achievement Award: The Last Dive, Cody Sheehy and Terry Kennedy 

 

 

Native Voices Legends Awards:

 

Jerry Laktonen - Culture Bearer (For reviving Alutiiq Mask-making)

 

Velma Wallis: Storyteller (Author of Two Old Women)

AUDIENCE AWARDS

 

Ryan Flynn

Narrative Feature - Rosemead - Eric Lin √

 

Documentary Feature - You're No Indian - Ryan Flynn √  

 

International Feature - The Mariana Trench -  Elieen Byrne 

 

Emilio Torres

Made In Alaska Feature Narrative - The Ladder - Emilio Torres √

 

Made In Alaska Documentary Feature -  K'etniyi: The Land Is Speaking to Us - Rory Banyard 

 

Made in Alaska Narrative Short - Matt Megan and Mike dont give an F about Codependency - Justin Lawrence Hoyt, Matt Jardin

 

Made In Alaska Documentary Short - Sunrise Summer -  Ian Mayer, Erin K Stein

 

Narrative Short - The Singers - Sam Davis 

 

Documentary Short - Greenland: Living with the Inuit -  Josefin Kuschela 

 

International Narrative Short - Hearts of Stone - Tom Van Avermaet

 

Music Video - Soiree -  Hannah Claire McDaniel  

 

Animation - A Little Story About Forever -  Max Romey √

SCREENPLAYS 

 

Feature  Screenplay:

Pangea Ultima - by Estevan Padilla -TIED with Mythomania by Nick Jones 

 

Short Screenplay

Parking by  Andrew Klaus-Vineyard

 

Pilot  Script 

Betty Lee Is Missing by Alysson Morgan 

In the past, I've sometimes blogged the awards as they were announced.  But in the past there were much fewer awards.  There was:

Winner, Runner Up, and Honorable Mention

in four or five categories - Narrative and Documentary Features, Narrative and Documentary Shorts, Made in Alaska.  These categories held for Jury Awards (from the judges within the Festival organizers, or film makers they reached out to), and Audience Awards - based on the ballots the audience marked after each showing.  

Sometimes the jurors came up with a special award to recognize an outstanding film that had some unique qualities and/or that didn't quite fit into the festival's categories.  

As I said above, awards play an important role in the post production struggle to get your film seen by audiences and even make some money.  So I think having more awards is good, but there are limits.  A festival doesn't want to be known as giving awards to everyone, because then the awards mean nothing.  Just getting accepted into a festival is a major achievement.  

I hope to follow up with my thoughts on some of my favorite films of the festival.  

AIFF 2025: Winning Films Shown Today From AIFF Instagram Post

"1pm Best of Shorts, a special collection celebrating some of our standout short films, including audience favorites, Best Director, the Humanitarian Award, Audience Favorite Music Video, and our iPhone Super Short Award winner. This block also includes a second screening of Two Old Women, which played out of competition and absolutely delighted us all.

3pm Documentary Feature, Comparsa, the recipient of AIFF's Real World Impact Award. A powerful and moving film that embodies why documentaries matter and how stories can create change beyond the screen.

5pm Narrative Feature, Burt, our Outstanding Jury Award winner. A true celebration of the independent spirit, heartfelt, hilarious, and wonderfully oddball in all the right ways. The kind of film that reminds us why indie cinema exists in the first place."

There are a lot of other winners from last night but the list I wrote down is sketchy.  There are lots of awards.  I'll get back to you later.  Our house guests won Best Actress and Best Directors of a Narrative Feature for The World Outside.  

More later, headed to the museum to see the shorts and documentary programs.  We've seen Burt.  

 

AIFF2025: Saturday: Don't Miss Two Old Women And The Award Ceremony. Sunday: Best of the Fest [UPDATED]

[UPDATED:  Saturday morning December 13, 2025:  The Native Shorts program Saturday afternoon at the Bear Tooth is sold out.]

 Saturday is a reduced schedule. I've got Sunday here too.  We've got Gwich'en and Glitched.

Anchorage Museum morning feature, then a move to the Bear Tooth.

10:30 am  Bonnie Thunders:  That Beautiful Moment

Here's information on Bonnie Thunders (the person, not the movie) from DNN (Derby News Network)

Bonnie Thunders, whose real name is Nicole Williams, grew up far from fame. She started out in synchronized skating, not the kind of place where people shout your name from the stands. But in 2006, she joined the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league in New York City. From that point, everything changed.

Her teammates still say she brought a calm focus that felt rare. She wasn’t loud; she just worked harder, trained longer, and thought deeper about the game. Wikipedia notes that she moved from a local skater to captain of the Gotham All-Stars in only a few years.

Bonnie Thunders and That Beautiful Moment

People often talk about Bonnie Thunder’s beautiful moment — not a single jam, but a kind of electricity that ran through her skating. She had a way of waiting, almost still, then bursting through a gap no one else saw. One stride later, the blockers were behind her, and the scoreboard was moving again.  [emphasis added]

That’s what made her famous beyond the sport itself. ESPN once called her the LeBron James of roller derby. It wasn’t just speed. It was how she turned reading a pack of moving bodies into art.

The Story of Bonnie Thunders Roller Derby

When fans say Bonnie Thunders’ roller derby, they mean the era when Gotham Girls couldn’t be stopped. Her leadership brought the team five world titles under the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association between 2008 and 2016.

Every season looked the same from the outside: Bonnie skating and Gotham winning this was always on the minds of the spectators. Inside the team, it was endless planning, tape study, and drills that left everyone breathless.

In 2017, she surprised the derby world by moving to Portland to join the Rose City Rollers, another powerhouse. ESPNW called it the biggest transfer in the sport. Yet, in true Bonnie fashion, she said little and let her skates do the talking.

If you're like me, you don't follow roller derby closely, or at all.  This seems like a great way to get an insider view of the sport and one of its greatest stars.  But appears this is a 2020 movie which is much older than festival guidelines allow.  This is the second film like that.  Haven't gotten an answer to my questions on why.  

BEAR TOOTH

12:30pm  Spotlight Selection Shorts

• Stronghold
• Christmas IRL
• The Singers
• Flavor of the Month
• Forged
• MascLooking
• Saverio

3pm  Native Voices

• My Message to You
• Alutiiq Superhero
• Shaped by Land
• Braids
• Witness:  Indigenous Arctic Voices
• The Woman Who Married A Bear
• Two Old Women

The Woman Who Married a Bear is a well known native story. 

Two Old Women is a well known and loved book.  When I taught a class that had a lot of women guest speakers, I gave out copies of the book as thank yous

Director on set with Two Old Women actors,
from email from the film making team

.  From the film's web page:

"Two elderly Gwich’in women —Ch’idzigyaak and Sa’—find themselves abandoned by their tribe during a brutally harsh famine. 

Devastated and scared of what the future holds, Sa' must convince Ch'idzigyaak that their survival is worth a fight and 'if we are going to die,then we should die trying to live'. 

Based on the novel by Velma Wallis 'Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival'"

"Shaaghan Neekwaii: Two Old Women is the first screen adaptation of Velma Wallis’s 1993 novel, filmed in Fairbanks, Alaska, and told entirely in the Gwich’in language. Directed by Gwich’in filmmaker Princess Daazhraii Johnson and starring Margaret Henry John and Brenda Kay Newman, the film explores themes of survival and resilience. Wallis has supported Johnson since she was first inspired by the book in her youth. “We know this story from our bones,” Wallis says. The film was produced by Deenaadai Productions, in partnership with Girinkhii - a Gwich'in language revitalization and cultural preservation organization." 

I'm guessing very few people in the world have ever seen a Gwich'in language movie.  

Williwaw Social

609 F Street, Anchorage, Alaska 99501

6:00pm  [Or maybe 8pm] AWARDS CEREMONY 

The printed program says 6pm.  The online schedule says 8pm.  (I'm guessing it's 8pm, but I'm checking and will confirm here when I learn more.)  [Got a text back from the head of the AIFF Board saying 6-9pm for the Awards Ceremony.]  

Looking Ahead to Sunday, while I have a bit of time, there's one more film and the Best of the Fest - showings of the award winning films at the Museum.  

10:30 am  Glitched  - Zoe Quist  Feature Narrative

From VIMooZ:

Alaskan filmmaker Zoe Quist’s sci-fi comedy Glitched will close the 25th Silver Anniversary edition of the Anchorage International Film Festival on Sunday, December 14, 2025.

Raised in the frozen wilds outside Fairbanks and still calling Alaska home, filmmaker Zoe Quist (Raw Cut, Mining for Ruby) brings her latest feature back to the state for its Alaska premiere following its U.S. Premiere at the La Femme International Film Festival, where Quist won Best Feature Director.

Starring Mischa Barton (The O.C.), Abigail O’Regan (Spellbound), Donal Brophy (Sleep No More), Jack McEvoy (Vikings), Elijah Rowen (Vikings), and John Connors (Crazy Love, Re-Creation by Jim Sheridan), Glitched follows a pair of ambitious twins who turn their grandmother’s crumbling castle into a virtual-reality playground, only to accidentally open a supernatural portal. Cue one debonair 18th-century ghost, a race against time, and a castle full of unlikely heroes trying not to get stuck in the afterlife. What happens when a VR game unleashes a real ghost?

Glitched is written by Steve Grabowsky (Los Angeles) and produced by Maria O’Neill, p.g.a. (The Black Guelph), Susan Wright, p.g.a., and Zoe Quist. 

"the frozen wilds" is a favorite cliche for Outsiders talking about Alaska.  

Museum - Best of The Fest

1pm - Best Short Films

3pm - Best Documentary Feature

4pm -  Best Narrative Feature

Best, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.  But there are a number of films in each category that I would be comfortable with.  Documentary features may be the hardest category to choose a best from.  But there were also several excellent features.  And there were sooooo many shorts to choose from.  

 

AIFF 2025: Wild Horses and The World Outside And Much More Friday

 In addition to spending much of the day watching movies, we also have two film makers staying with us and so we talk when we get home at night.  Blogging suffers.  

Below is the Friday schedule from the AIFF website. (The link only takes you to the main schedule page and you have to click on Friday to get the details.)

Yesterday (really it feels like it was only this morning) I put up a video of our house guests talking about their feature narrative The World Outside.  This is a World Premier  The first public screening of this film.  Right here in Anchorage.  I haven't seen the film, but I've heard a lot about it from our houseguests, so go to the link above and watch the video of them. 

Waiting in the food line this afternoon at the Bear Tooth, before the documentary The Last Dive (which was worth seeing just for the wonder of watching huge oceanic manta rays) I met Carrie Lederer whose film Wild Horses At The Door plays in the Doc Shorts 2 program at 10:30 am at the E Street Theater. 

 [NOTE:  This has been moved from the museum as has the 1pm screening at the museum.  So this is different from the written program, but it was updated on the online program.]

Also, note that the online schedule is by venue first, then by time.  So there is a 10:30 film down at the bottom at the Alaska Experience Theater.  

The schedule formatting seems to have done weird stuff when I copied it from the website.  It's going on 1:30am now, so I'm going to leave it.  If it's too hard to read go to the AIFF website and pick Friday from the bar on the top of the schedule. 

Venue:

UPDATE: E Street Theater

315 E Street, Anchorage, Alaska 99501

10:30 AM: Shorts Block: Doc Shorts 2 – Event Tickets

• Follow the Flower — Destyn Patera
• Brewer — Erika Valenciana
• Corteza — Simon Acosta
• Liam & Friends — Chad
• Loki Pete — BJ Bullert
• Wild Horses at the Door — Carrie Lederer

1:00 PM: Shorts Block: Is It Love? – Event Tickets

• The Wedding — Matt Latham
• Te Seguiré a la Oscuridad — Nicholas Luciano 
• Empano Gleasium — Joe Bowden
• I’m Not Sure — Mylissa Fitzsimmons
• Reminisce — Leslie Morris 
• Tango in Room 1310 — Colin Alistair Campbell
• Double Date — Hannah Wolf
• A King’s Curtain — Grant M. Johnson

Venue:

Anchorage Museum

625 C Street, Anchorage, Alaska 99501

3:30 PM: Feature

• I’ve Seen All I Need To See — Zeshaan Younus – Event Tickets

6:00 PM: Feature

• The Long Run — Mylissa Fitzsimmons – Event Tickets

8:30 PM: Feature

• Lockjaw — Sabrina Greco – Event Tickets

Venue:

Alaskan Experience

333 W. 4th Avenue (NW corner of 4th & C St. – enter on C), Anchorage, Alaska 99501

10:30 AM: Feature

• Ashes of The Mountain — Joseph Lindley – Event Tickets

1:00 PM: Shorts Block: Arctic Shorts – Event Tickets

• Greenland – Living with the Inuit — Josefin Kuschela
• In Search of the Arctic Fox — Zach Hellmuth
• Let My People Go Skiing — Ellen Bradley

3:30 PM: Shorts Block: Alaska Doc Shorts – Event Tickets

• Iditarod: The Loneliest Road — Mason Quinn Schwarz
• The Story of a Slough — Dawson Brannan 
• Silver Rush — Kelsey Kroon 
• Hidden Roots — Brad Hillwig 
• Swift Current Swimmer — John W. Bushell

6:00 PM: Feature

• Comparsa — Vickie Curtis, Doug Anderson – Event Tickets

8:30 PM: Feature

• The World Outside — Katrine Eichberger, Nikolas Mühe – Event Tickets