According to Criss Austin's article referenced above, Todes Muhlen or Die Todesmühlen (the original German version) was "written and directed" by  Hanuš Burger (or Hans Burger if you're looking at IMDB). At the time the film was made, Burger was 36 years old. Online English-language sources are rather thin, but there is a German article from the DEFA-Foundation on his fascinating, brave life here. What follows is a brief recap:

Born in Prague in 1909, Burger relocated with his family to Germany when he was 11. In Frankfurt am Main he graduated high school and quickly ditched a shoe-making apprenticeship for the theater. There his interests in design, dramaturgy, directing and writing flourished. In his early 20s he worked professionally as a dramaturg, stage designer and theater director, also penning plays and at least one screenplay. He mingled with left-wing actors and co-founded a Bertolt Brecht club as well as a club for Czech-German stage employees. He explored the experimental theater scene, was active in the Czechoslovakian Communist party, wrote articles about his experiences in theater, became the editor of a journal, and worked under a pseudonym as a courier to Berlin.

At 29 Burger collaborated with American documentarian Herbert Kline on Crisis (1939), a film documenting the 1938 German Reich's annexation of Sudetenland,  Czechoslovakia, and the resistance response that followed. After the footage for Crisis was shot, Burger participated in smuggling it out of Czechoslovakia. The film was completed in New York in 1939, and swiftly named best picture of the year by the National Board of Review. One of the first anti-Hitler documentaries ever made, Crisis has since been restored by the MoMA and is available for purchase on Blu-ray with a short clip online here.

After fleeing Europe in 1938 Burger taught at NYU and continued to make documentaries. An application to the US army was initially rejected because of his known communist activities, but he was later drafted and served overseas in the Propaganda and Psychological Warfare Detachment. He eventually turned his experiences with the army into the non-fiction novel 1212 Sends. After winning an Academy Award for his documentary short First Steps in 1948, he continued to direct throughout the 1950s and 60s, even as he left America to avoid scrutiny by HUAC. In 1965 he helmed the feature Nichts als Sünde (English title: Nothing But Sin), a musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which he had originally directed for the stage. He was still working in television as late as 1977, and died in Munich in 1990 at the age of 81.

And after typing all that, I still think it doesn't do justice to what I read in the DEFA-Foundation's article about Burger. Let's just say he was an artist, an activist, a teacher, an army man, an ex-pat. An enfant terrible, a polymath. A virtuoso.

And yet, Billy Wilder is "often credited as the director of the English version" of Death Mills, according to Criss Austin. Also according to Austin, it's likely that Burger and Wilder collaborated on editing Die Todesmühlen, although the DEFA article suggests that Wilder was only brought in later to supervise. The internet is a bit murky on how the two really partnered up for Death Mills. Perhaps it's covered in a Wilder biography, or perhaps it's in the ol' memory hole. Billy is known to have travelled to and served in Berlin at the close of WWII "as a colonel in the US Army's Division of Psychological Warfare charged with helping to assess and rebuild Germany’s film industry," according to this paper. He was also on a personal hunt for information about his mother, grandmother and step-father, all of whom lost their lives to the Nazis' juggernaut.
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As for the footage in Die Todesmühlen, Austin asserts that it was taken as "a record of events, for troop education, use in war crimes trials, and for other educational purposes."

Like teaching those of us privileged not to know, what genocide really looks like.

Death Mills is relentless and hallucinogenic in its brutality. It is a parade of human skeletons, some living, some dead, some somewhere in between. Orphans raise their sleeves to show tattooed identification numbers as a voiceover intones that many of them have forgotten their own names. Death chambers abound. Despicable signage. Vats of wedding rings, watches, dentures and gold fillings, ripped from their owners' hands, wrists, mouths. Piles upon piles upon piles upon close-ups of faces in piles upon piles of corpses. So many heaped dead that I found myself choking on demented near-laughter -- how can this be real, this is absurd, a trick of the camera, there can't possibly be that many bodies, it must be fake.

It's not fake. This is real news, baby. It all really happened.

This morning the Universe bestowed an expected blessing to break up the last 48 hours of stark raving dread: "Love! Hope! Peace" has been nominated for a Native American Music Award (aka Nammy). Producing/directing this video was an honor, and Kevin and I are so happy for Jan Michael Looking Wolf and Native Rose. 

When Jan composes, he channels. As he's described it, the music and lyrics 'arrive' from somewhere else, somewhere Sacred. My wish now is that the sacred message in "Love! Hope! Peace!" reaches more folks who need it through this nomination. The inclusivity of that message, coming from one whose People faced a violent genocide just a few generations back, blows me away. And really: is the current state of affairs any wonder when the leaders in Washington do not -- have never -- openly and widely acknowledged that this genocide was foundational in the construction of our fine "United States of America"?

Longer conversation for another time, perhaps.

"Love! Hope! Peace!" was shot entirely within the traditional homelands of the Santiam Kalapuya people (Jan's tribe). The interior concert footage was taken at the PRAx on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. The exterior shots were done on location at Minto-Brown Island Park in Salem, OR. Jan Michael Looking Wolf is an OSU professor, a United States Army veteran, and a Kalapuya Elder active in the governance of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
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Busted out a couple of yarn-forward sea cucumbers on a recent trip to LA. Special thanks to Mom for the materials and puppeteering, and to Bud for her whimsical under-the-sea set, art supplies and camera work. Shout out to Ezra Severin for jaw harp and mixing on "Bug Boy Blues", an original tune I composed back in 2020 for Junebug's Corner. I think it suits Cute Cumber and Gherkin just fine too!
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,In 2016, my best friend and I manifested the inner infant of Donald Trump and took it across the country. It was initially her idea, and I was, initially, skeptical. Ultimately it's been one of the grandest adventures of our friendship. 

We had been working on a Youtube series about two bumbling, would-be new age influencers who were also possibly lovers for half a year when it became clear that Donald Trump was going to become the Republican candidate. Other than voting and complaining to friends and family about whatever the current cause celebre/ Right Wing gaff might be, I had never been politically involved. So "reparenting" a miniature Donald Trump effigy in a live, performative, comico-political action was daunting. But Manda was game, and since 2004 wherever Manda led, I followed. And I'd never regretted it.

I was living in Los Angeles and she was in Grants Pass, OR, so the initial build of the voodoo doll fell on her. As she sent me footage of the process, I warmed to the idea. It was just so WEIRD. And, oddly, it started to make sense. When we took the doll to the Jackson County Fair together in the summer as a sort of test flight, I was amazed by the instant chord it struck. We were fully in costume and character, and I wore Donald in a DIY-constructed front pack so that he was in the vanguard everywhere we went. And people WANTED to engage. We filmed various interviews that day and got some great one-liners from folks who clearly had a lot of deep feeling about what was going on in Washington. The doll seemed to disarm them, allowing them to speak freely and from the heart. I started to develop a sense of pride around the project; I was letting my freak flag fly in a way that challenged me as an artist, and, maybe more importantly, I was engaged in real political activism for the first time. Because Manda had dreamed it and we'd built it out together, it was an activism that felt organic, artistic and productive.

We ended up filming with Baby Don Don in Los Angeles, Washington DC, New York (we actually took him into Trump Tower and no one stopped us) and Las Vegas. I soon learned that some folks who came in for a closer look would quickly scurry away when they 'got' it -- MAGA supporters, I assumed.  They showed us their backs, but they were never mean.

I've navel gazed over the years, returning to watch these videos somewhat regularly. I didn't do much to personally promote them when we were making them. We had a dedicated Youtube channel, Facebook page and Twitter, but I never claimed Wanda Ann Pollard (my character) in a meaningful and outright way on my own puny social media. I'm a bit ashamed now to admit the reason: my folks didn't respond to the material. Now, eight years on, I have some ego strength and distance from my particular parental enmeshment in the 2010s (my husband jokingly characterizes some of my family's dynamics as "Southern California Gothic"). I'm hip to the truth that while my parents have generally good taste, they are not the Arbiters of it. And I'm allowed to be as loudly proud of the bizarre world of Wanda Ann, Chastity and Donald as I actually am.

Kevin and I were grateful to attend the White Buffalo Calf Ceremony and Gathering of Nations on June 26th, as part of the Buffalo Field Campaign's media team. We used footage we captured with BFC's Brand and Social Media Coordinator Chuck Irestone to create the cut above. Speakers included:

Lee Juan Tyler (Chairman, Shoshone-Bannock Tribe)
Develynn Hall (Miss Shoshone Bannock)
Ryman LeBeau (Chairman, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe)
Darnell Sam (Wenatchi Salmon Chief, Colville Confederated Tribes)
Michael Bearcomesout (Sacred Hat Keeper, Northern Cheyenne)
Vincent White Crane (Sundance Priest, Northern Cheyenne)
Walks Out of Water/Devin Oldman (Northern Arapaho)
James Holt, Sr. (BFC Executive Director, Nez Perce)
Mike Mease (BFC Co-Founder)

The ceremony was presided over by Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the 19th generation C'anupa (Sacred Calf Pipe) Keeper of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Buffalo Field Campaign's press release about the ceremony can be found here.

See BuffaloFieldCampaign.org for more information on this organization's 27-year mission to defend the wild buffalo of Yellowstone. 

Kevin and I were in Portland over the weekend attending a wedding dinner for my Uncle Mark and his wife Lily (and Mazel McTov to them!) which meant I got to visit the Portland Puppet Museum. Even roped my sister Anna in too! We spent almost two hours in the single-room museum in wonderful delight as founder Steve Overton regaled us with stories, building techniques and demonstrations. I never imagined Steve would be on site to show us around and boy are we lucky that he was. The museum is an unimaginable treasure trove, but I think Steve himself is the real gem of the collection.

​From their joints to their controls, their facial expressions to their elaborate costumes, Steve’s puppets are stunning. And his ability to create so much in such a small space is a miracle. But above all I was struck by his boundless generosity. He was willing to share so much knowledge while also celebrating the prowess of other puppeteers. Steve brought out marionettes by Phillip Huber and Mary Nagler and we all ooh’d an ahh’d, even as his own brilliant creations looked on from their strings. This generosity is a striking phenomenon to me in my (admittedly recent) dive into puppetry. I’m not sure if it’s because there are so few practitioners anymore, but I’ve experienced this communitarian attitude in other instances – like at the Bob Baker, where video recording is encouraged (a boon that allowed me to figure out how to string my puppets to blink on an airplane control), and with Joseph and Wilma Cashore, who graciously entered into a correspondence with me and even gifted me Joseph's DVD. Similarly, Steve was an open, joyous book. He didn’t mind me taking photos or videos, asking weirdo questions or for him to repeat a name or piece of information – he just wanted to talk puppets. To share what he knows and what he’s done. And the stories are delicious. Just ask him how he ended up John Ritter’s body double in Skin Deep.

On October 27th, 2023 Kevin and I received a call from our friend Jan Michael Looking Wolf. Jan wanted to know if we'd be willing to come to Eugene in November to shoot live footage of his new musical project Native Rose. Kevin and I looked at each other, blinked a few times said "Yes" in unison. Jan had no idea we'd just returned from the Missoula County Courthouse where we had quite literally just gotten married. The offer felt like the Universe's wedding gift to us. Or Jan's. Or both.

We shot with three cameras: two GoPros on tripods and a roaming iPhone. We learned a lot (especially about the importance of correct lighting settings on any camera being used in a dark concert hall and certain pitfalls of "cinematic" mode on iPhone15). Mostly we had an amazing time basking in the music and the excellent energy of everyone in attendance; it was a beautiful night and we were so honored to be a part of it.

Editing "We Can Live As One" over the past weeks has been a welcome chance to relive the magic of the concert and the power of One Heart.  May the performance bring you the hope and peace it did for us -- and hayu-masi to Jan, RG and the Native Rose Band!

“There’s an article I think you should read,” my husband Kevin offers, somewhat tentatively, over coffee and tea. He knows from experience that my attention span is short -- there’s about a 50% chance I’ll finish (or even open) what he emails for me to read. Not because I don’t want to. I just…get distracted.
 
“What’s it about?”
“Neo-romanticism.”
 
I don’t take the bait immediately, and the morning goes on. But the phrase sticks in my head and in the afternoon I circle back: “What about that article made you think I should read it?”
 
“It reminded me of your puppets.”
 
Now he has my attention. The article will almost certainly be read. And by the next day, it is:
 
The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms. By Ross Barkan
 
For the last two years I have been falling, at an increasingly rapid rate, down a very particular rabbit hole: marionettes. I built my first one in 2022 for a children’s video series, and it was love-at-first-string. Making puppets co-mingles all my passions, allowing me to exercise every single muscle I’ve tried to develop over the last 25 years. From the visual arts of sketching, sculpting and painting, to writing music and dialogue, costume and set construction, problem solving and mechanical engineering (a new discovery for me) and finally performance – in the tiny world of marionettes I can test my mettle as an auteur. I’m not a fan of that word, but the alternative “control-freak” is even less appealing. And I think that in my creative life it’s what I’ve always wanted to be. The world-builder. God.
 
We all seek out agency, control, power in our own ways, don’t we?
 
Many years of enjoying the Bob Baker Marionettes prompted the question “I wonder if I could do that?” I found that I could, and relished pretty much every part of the process. But the delighted look on people’s faces when they see what I’ve built is a major, unexpected perk. Over the last year, in addition to succumbing to the gravity of my puppet-flavored rabbit hole, I’ve come to accept that I’m really a live performer. A 6-month stint at the Utah Shakespeare Festival – my first time in a repertory company since 2014 – reminded me that there is no substitution for the thrilling terror I feel before stepping onto the stage. I’ll always be an actor. I’ll always say yes to a chance to shape characters with my whole being. It’s an exhausting, dangerous and thrilling thing to do – trying to just live in front of a room full of people. But puppetry is acting with a mask (a fact my friend and fellow actor Ramiz Monsef pointed out to me last year). I find this extremely appealing. Masking removes traces of self-consciousness, doubt and ego. It frees your consciousness to flow entirely into the tiny creature dangling from your fingers. You’re here, now.
 
YouTuber Byrne Power has a video on his puppet channel entitled “How to Start a Puppet Theatre or Puppet Troupe – Instructions for a Reality Based Art” in which he asserts that most people in the US have never seen a live marionette show. Enviably, Byrne has spent a lot of time in Europe and other parts of the world where puppetry gets real attention and thrives as an envelope-pushing art form. But in the US broad exposure is limited to the (brilliant) muppets of Jim Henson. The names of marionette artists such as Hobey Ford, Jim Cashore and Phillip Huber are not widely recognized beyond the puppet world. Their live performances are hard to see unless you live or happen to be in the particular part of the country where they’re based (and now Mr. Cashore is retired so I fear I’ve lost my chance entirely). Investigating the record of marionettes in America led me to incredible work by master puppeteers and troupes that I had never heard of – Tony Sarg, Rufus and Margo Rose, the Yale Puppeteers, René Zendejas, just to name a few. In the distant past, puppets had a place on vaudeville stages, and even early film and television -- explaining coffee production, importation and packaging for the American Can Company  and hawking washing machines for RCA Whirlpool, for instance. So there is rich history. But I feel the truth of what Byrne said in his video: in the US of the 21st century, marionette performance is a vanishingly rare art form.
 
Kevin and I were married in Missoula, Montana (his home for the last 10+ years) in late October, 2023. He knew I was eager to get my puppets out in the world but had been nervous to do so. It felt like a big step, busking for the first time at the age of 40; somehow all the live theater in formal playhouses before paying audiences just wasn’t the same. In broad daylight, on a street corner, people can wander up and talk to you, touch the wiggly thing on strings, interact, walk away in the middle of it. The rules just aren’t the same. Even from behind the ‘mask’ I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle it, and it both excited and terrified me. So Kevin suggested a gentle entrée to the world of street performance: walk with the puppets in the Día de Los Muertos parade on November 2nd.
 
“Great!” I thought. The focus wouldn’t really be on us at all. It would be a chance to offer up what I’d been working on to the community in a spirit of celebration and remembrance. And a way for me to honor the life of Maila Nurmi, creator of Vampira, the inspiration for one of my new marionettes.
 
It was all of those things, but it ended up being more. Kevin rigged a speaker to his chest so our puppets had their own music to dance and lip-synch to. Face after face lit up. Parents led shy children over to us and whispered “See? It’s a marionette!”, and I knew many were hearing the word for the first time. Some kids were weirded out, even frightened at first. But most came around for another peek and lingered. Others were instantly mesmerized.
 
Friends and family have suggested I start an Instagram page or make TikTok videos. I’ve given it thought. “Maybe I could develop enough of a following to monetize!” But my gut consistently offers a hard ‘no’ in response. There is something intrinsic to this that demands the live experience. Like the neo-romantics heralded by Ross Barkan, I am engaging in an act of rebellion. Choosing to live at least this part of my life off-screen.
 
My marionette obsession is an atavistic one. When I pull these strings I’m connecting to artists across space and time. Through their creations, I’ve come to know the minds of people who were gone before I ever arrived. To audiences in the present I’m offering a reality that can only be experienced here and now, where and whenever “here” and “now” are – a black box theater, a streetcorner, a parade. I think there’s something sacred in that. It’s small enough to swing from my fingers, but far larger than the video player in the palm of your hand.

For the last year, my partner Kevin and I have been quietly plugging away on a project completely unlike anything I've ever attempted before -- Earth Music Odyssey. Following the adventures of space alien Jheri and their pet Borborygmus, this short-form children's series explores world music and the diversity of instruments and artists in said (extremely broad) genre. We were lucky to receive sponsorship from the BrittKids Klub, an educational arm of the Britt Music & Arts Festival in Jacksonville, OR. Kay Hilton co-produced the series on that end. Thank you Kay.

I've collaborated with Britt for a long time -- first with The Meriwethers (our Lewis & Clark Band) and then with the video projects Junebug's Forest Friends and Junebug's Curious Year. On all of these previous ventures, by best friend and frequent collaborator Manda Bryn Severin was the main creative engine and liaison with Britt. It was always a delight and privilege to work in service of her vision and I hope for more in that department. But the beginning of 2022 saw me yearning for some kind of new creative endeavor of my own. Manda mentioned that given the history, Britt might be open to hearing a pitch from me -- and Earth Music Odyssey was born.

Really, it felt like a bubbling-to-the-surface of something that's been brewing inside of me for years and years. Probably since childhood. I remember watching Punch and Judy shows on a vast lawn in Stanley Park in the late 1980s (my mom often took us with her when she was on a lengthy shoot -- in this case, for Stephen King's IT). I wish I could say these viewings immediately launched a lifelong obsession with puppets, but it I think they just planted the seed. It wasn't until 2014 or 15 that it germinated -- at the original location of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in downtown LA. Watching the puppets parade on the red carpet, I fell in love instantly. Maybe it was that I'd never seen string puppets up close before. They're delicate, expressive and demure (by which I mean they don't have a hand shoved up their ass). In my mind, they're so wholly different from rod-arm and hand puppets as to be another species. Not that I don't love the Kermits and Lambchops of the world, it's just...marionettes grabbed me in a special way. 

Pause for a plug: The Bob Baker Marionette Theater has since moved to a new location on York Boulevard in Highland Park, an old vaudeville house that the company has polished into a jewel. From the murals on the walls to the little window vignettes (perhaps a nod to Bob's Disneyland window displays?) to the ornate pipe organ stage right, BBMT's new home is more than equal to its previous one. And its players are as charming as ever: tiny drums beat themselves, particolored flowers waltz on delicate feet, black cats shimmy, skeletons ride motorcycles and gangly hens lay tiny eggs that (spoiler alert) hatch and make their own exit. Every time, I gasp with delight and giggle with glee. It's actually kind of embarrassing, but fuck it.

I watched a two-year-old on her first day at the Bob Baker Theater last year, eyes stretched in silent wonder, arms reaching out toward the unbelievable spectacle. An instant fan. She left chattering with excitement, her young mother and grandmother barely able to pry her from her seat. I could relate.

Puppets aside for a moment, I began gestating another obsession circa 2015. There's no easy or polite way to say it, so here it is: Huell Howser. He drives me NUTS. He asks insensitive questions, pushes people in and out of shots, barks at his cameramen (bless you Luis and Cameron), puts his hand on the small of ladies' backs in tight hallways -- all the old-guard, quotidian offenses. He's so ridiculously tone deaf, it's surely a bit. Except it's not. (The one possible exception I've come across is an episode where he weeps with hushed reverence in the presence of premature babies and their nurses.)

And yet...he's inquisitive. He's fearless. He made something out of nothing again and again. He delights in weird shit and lifts it up for people to see. And at least he exposes everyone equally to his boorishness; in every episode I've seen -- and I've seen a lot -- he appears to be color unconscious (for better or worse) and to sincerely love learning about new cultures, arts and practices, even if he asks the most obnoxious questions you'd never think of.

I love him, the way I love my late southern grandpa West.

So Jheri, the E.T. at the center of Earth Music Odyssey, is the non-binary bastard love child of -- you guessed it -- the Bob Baker Marionette Theater and Huell Howser. A uniquely California creation and one straight from the heart. 

There are a lot of people who helped out that I'd like to thank and hopefully they know who they are -- but I'll urge you, reader, to peep the episode if you want their names. (Okay, I'm also just proud of our end credit sequence.) Britt plans to release an episode per month through June, so subscribe to their Youtube channel or sign up for the BrittKids Klub e-newsletter here if you want updates.

Life is so short. I'm learning to follow my heart even if it takes me in a direction that's strange and intimidating. Wish me courage in that department and I'll wish the same for you. Nell

Unfortunately we've had to postpone this reading for COVID safety reasons. The producers at Circle X and the rest of the creative team are eager to get it back on the books though -- and props to all of them for putting safety first! America needs this play just now, so stay healthy and check back for an update soon.