“In the desert, every newcomer is an enemy till you know him to be a friend,” says Gertrude Bell, voiced by Tilda Swinton, in a new trailer for Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum’s “Letters from Baghdad.” The documentary tells the story of Bell, who was once considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire. The spy, explorer, and political officer’s life is also being brought to the big screen by Nicole Kidman, who plays the trailblazer in Werner Herzog’s upcoming “Queen of the Desert.” After decades of being overlooked and underestimated by history, Bell’s extraordinary life is finally receiving well-deserved attention.
Born in 1868, “Bell traveled widely in Arabia before being recruited by British military intelligence to help draw the borders of Iraq after WWI, establish the modern state of Iraq, and reshape the modern Middle East in ways that still reverberate today,” “Letters from Baghdad’s” official synopsis details.
“She knows more about the Arabs and Arabians than almost any other living Englishman or woman,” a character in the documentary observes. It was Bell who created the Iraq Museum — famously ransacked during the American invasion in 2003 — to preserve and protect cultural artifacts and antiquities of the region.
“Using stunning, never-seen-before footage of the region from 100 years ago, and more than 1,600 letters written by Bell and her contemporaries, the film chronicles Bell’s extraordinary journey into both the uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power,” the film’s description hints. “All dialogue in the film is excerpted verbatim from original source material.”
“We have both traveled extensively in the Middle East and are very familiar with many of the regions that Gertrude Bell explored 100 years before us. We were attracted to Bell as a compelling character after we both read her definitive biography by Janet Wallach, ‘Desert Queen,’” Krayenbühl and Oelbaum told Women and Hollywood. “We discovered how enormously powerful and influential she had been during her day, yet is virtually forgotten today. Even a recent biography about her colleague and friend T.E. Lawrence omitted her completely. We wanted to find out why.”
The filmmakers described Bell as “a fascinating woman who was arrogant, vulnerable, confident, and complex,” and emphasized that she “championed the diversity of the Middle East and observed that the people of the region were more tolerant of other ethnicities and religions than the rigid Victorian England of her youth. She had a sincere interest in other cultures and a curiosity and passion to discover a world she was unfamiliar with,” they said. “Gertrude Bell became an inspiration to us and we hope that she can inspire others as well, especially young women.”
“Letters from Baghdad” marks both Krayenbühl and Oelbaum’s directorial debut. The doc made its world premiere at the 2016 Beirut International Film Festival and opens in NY June 2.
