The Angelmakers
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| The Angelmakers | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Astrid Bussink |
| Release date(s) | 2005 |
The Angelmakers is a 2005 documentary, and the debut film of filmmaker Astrid Bussink. The documentary was selected for the First Appearance competition at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam.
The film is shot on location in the rural Hungarian village of Nagyrév. Alternating between portraits of the surrounding landscape and first-hand narrations by the elderly inhabitants, the film provides some insight into the epidemic of arsenic murders that brought worldwide attention to the area in 1929. Some women poisoned unwanted husbands based on their oppression, drunkenness or laziness, some because the wives had taken lovers, some because the husbands had returned home disabled from World War I. Unwanted babies were also poisoned.
A web of stories unfolds through the characters' memories which recapture old but ever-lasting tales of life, death and the struggle between the sexes. One of them is the midwife's story as well as one of the narrators' revelation that the 'flypaper' murders were a wide-spread practice not only in the particular area but on a national level. The film tries to give some insight in the domestic battles that the women of the village have to fight.
[edit] External links
- An article on the murders
- Another article on the murders (in Hungarian)
- TWO NAGYREV BABIES POISONED BY ARSENIC; Exhumation Gives New Turn to Series of Murders in Hungarian District The New York Times, 1929-09-13
- Hungary Opens Grim Trials of Fifty Women For Poisoning Husbands and Other Relatives The New York Times, 1929-12-14
- MURDER BY WHOLESALE: A TALE FROM HUNGARY; HUNGARY'S BORGIAS AT THE BARThe New York Times, 1930-03-16
