Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, April 4: THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: SATAN CAME TO EDEN
Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s mesmerizing stranger-than-fiction island murder mystery made its debut last year at Telluride. It went on to screen at the Hamptons, Berlin, New Orleans filmOrama, Palm Springs, Vail, and Bermuda, among others.
Goldfine and Geller recount the strange story of Floreana, an uninhabited island of the Galapagos – until a pair of Germans – Dr Friedrich Ritter, and his patient and partner, Dore Strauch – showed up in 1929, seeking an escape from civilization. Viewed as curiosities, reports of their life on the island spread by visiting seaman to newspapers internationally, eventually drawing fellow Germans Heinz and Margret Wittmer in 1931. Though the first couple had viewed Floreana as theirs exclusively, they begrudgingly helped the Wittmers when pregnant Margaret gave birth to their son, but largely kept to their own side of the island. The uneasy equilibrium the Germans tried to maintain was completely upset, however, when Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet arrived, an Austrian who claimed to be a Baroness. With two lovers in tow, the grandstanding Baroness announced her plans to build a hotel and turn Floreana into a tourist destination – anathema to the rest of the island’s inhabitants. These competing philosophies set up a powderkeg on the island, and what follows is contested, but serves as the crux of Goldfine and Geller’s intriguing history, which is further peppered with the unique experiences of modern-day Galapagos residents.
what (not) to doc 