Astrid Bussink is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 filmmaker. Her debut film is the documentary Angelmakers

Angelmakers

The Angelmakers is a 2005 documentary, the debut film of filmmaker Astrid Bussink, which provides insight into the epidemic of arsenic murders by women, known as The Angel Makers of Nagyrév, which brought worldwide attention to the area in 1929...

.
She studied fine art at the Academy of fine Arts, AKI, Enschede (BA) in the Netherlands and her Master in film at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.
During this Master she shot her award winning documentary 'The Angelmakers' (First Appearance Award IDFA, Little Stamp award, ZagrebDOX, Best short Documentary, Dokufest

Dokufest

Dokufest is an International Documentary and Short Film Festival that is held every year during August in Prizren, Kosovo. It started recently, in 2002. This Festival attracts numerous international and regional artists...

, nomination Grierson Award and more).
After this she made the short films Rückenlage / Upside Down ( Best Short Experimental film at Vermont International Film Festival, nominated Silver Cub, IDFA 2006), The 9 lives of my car (a.o. Dutch Filmfestival 2007) and I shot the mayor (Or: Plan B) (a.o. nominated Silver Cub IDFA 2007, official selection Zagrebdox and HOTDOCS).

Bussink now lives and works in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 where she made her first feature length documentary The Lost Colony (Official Selection Rotterdam International Filmfestival, HOTDOCS a.o.) and has now finished her new personal documentary Mijn Enschede, about the Enschede fireworks disaster

Enschede fireworks disaster

The Enschede fireworks disaster was a catastrophic fireworks explosion occurring at the SE Fireworks depot on 13 May 2000, in the eastern Dutch city of Enschede....

that happened in 2000, in which 23 people died, 1000 were injured. 'My Enschede' has premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2010.

During her artist in residency program in New York she started her project Constructions of (www.constructionsofhappiness.com) which she showed in galleries in New York and Edinburgh. Back in the Netherlands she is now continuing her COH project and is working on the documentary by the same title.

External links

www.docster.nl
www.constructionsofhappiness.com