Pressive Modern History
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Letters From Baghdad The True Story of Gertrude Bell and Iraq She was as controversial as the history she made WITH TILDA SWINTON AS THE VOICE OF GERTRUDE BELL A DOCUMENTARY BY SABINE KRAYENBÜHL AND ZEVA OELBAUM IN THEATERS ON JUNE 2, 2017 DIRECTED BY Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl PRODUCED BY Zeva Oelbaum EDITED BY Sabine Krayenbühl CO-PRODUCER: Mia Bays EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Tilda Swinton, Thelma Schoonmaker, Ruedi Gerber ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS: Christian Popp, Fabrice Estève RUNTIME: 95 min | COUNTRY: USA, UK, France | LANGUAGE: English, Arabic OFFICIAL FILM WEBSITE: lettersfrombaghdad.com TRAILER: lettersfrombaghdadthemovie.com/media/ PUBLICISTS: Falco Ink. / Victoria Vargas / [email protected] / 212.445.7100 Falco Ink. / April Tonsil / [email protected] / 212.445.7100 Winner Audience Award LOGLINE Voiced and executive produced by Academy award winning actor Tilda Swinton, Letters from Baghdad tells the extraor- dinary and dramatic story of Gertrude Bell, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. Bell shaped the destiny of Iraq after World War I in ways that still reverberate today. More influential than her friend and colleague T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia), why has she been written out of the history? SYNOPSIS Letters from Baghdad is the story of a true original—Gertrude Bell—sometimes called the “female” Lawrence of Arabia. Voiced and executive produced by Academy award winning actor Tilda Swinton, the documentary tells the dramatic story of this British spy, explorer and political powerhouse. Bell traveled widely in Arabia before being recruited by British military intelligence to help draw the borders of Iraq after WWI. Using never-seen-before footage of the region, the film chronicles Bell’s extraordinary journey into both the uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power. With unique access to documents from the Iraq National Library and Archive and Gertrude Bell’s own 1600 letters, the story is told entirely in the words of the players of the day, excerpted verbatim from inti- mate letters, private diaries and secret communiqués. It is a unique look at both a remarkable woman and the tangled history of Iraq. The film takes us into a past that is eerily current. DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT We have often reflected on why making this film about Gertrude Bell felt so intensely urgent and personal to us. What was it about her and her story that made us, a film editor and a producer and still-photographer, join forces and take the leap to becoming first-time directors? We first met while working on another documentary film, “Ahead of Time,” which premiered at the Toronto Interna- tional Film Festival in 2009. Zeva produced and Sabine edited that film, about a groundbreaking centenarian journalist named Ruth Gruber. Each of us had traveled extensively in the Middle East, including Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Syria, and had been captivated by Janet Wallach’s biography of Gertrude Bell, “Desert Queen”. We found Bell fascinating, complex and contradictory and were intrigued by the contrast between her public and private self. She had been considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire during her era, and was much more influential than her colleague T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia), yet virtually written out of the history that she helped make. She left behind more than 1600 letters and 7,000 photographs. Her stunning photographs and vibrant letters transported us into her daily life and the world she loved. We share an appreciation of archival footage and love the idea of using it the way a painter works with a palette. We knew it would be a challenge to find film footage shot over a century ago in the Middle East. How much footage would exist of Baghdad, Damascus, Teheran and Cairo? After all, this was the era of the birth of cinema. If we found footage, what shape would it be in? The results of our international search for footage thrilled us. After 4 years of research, we discovered over 1000 extraordinary film clips in more than 25 archives around the world, some of it hand-tinted. Much of what we found had never been digitized, and was buried in reels that had been in storage for more than half a century. Our previous travels in the Middle East were extremely helpful, as we navigated through hours of footage, some of which was misla- beled (e.g. Afghanistan was occasionally included in footage of the Arabian peninsula). We discovered the evidence of a truly vanished world—a vibrant mosaic where peoples of different ethnicities and religions mingled energetically on the streets. We requested that each archive go into their vaults and scan the original 35mm footage, providing us with the best quality footage and preserving it digitally for use by other filmmakers. This 2 | LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD was the mission of our successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014. From the beginning, it was important for us to tell the controversial story of the British occupation of Iraq and the drawing of its borders using primary source material. Because this region of the world is notorious for conflicting narratives, we didn’t want to use talking head historians to put things “into perspective and context”. Whose perspec- tive? Which context? We felt that the most authentic way to tell the story would be through the words of the actual players of the day. We also didn’t want to rely solely on Gertrude Bell’s point of view and researched her colleagues in the colonial office, her family and close friends. Turning this original source material into dialogue, we used actors to portray these individuals. To ensure that this footage would interweave seamlessly with the archival clips, we shot actual 16mm film. The idea emerged to create a documentary that could have been made in the late 1920s after Bell’s death, a film that would completely immerse the viewer in another time and place. We felt that to use contemporary interviews with historians and other experts would undermine the viewer’s ability to experience the full power of Bell’s epic story. Our hope is that viewers come away from our film with a deeper understanding and nuanced appreciation of this part of the world and its peoples. This goal seems even more urgent given the current political climate in the United States and other parts of the Western world. Gertrude Bell championed tolerance and the diversity of this region. She is an inspiration not only for her trailblazing journeys and accomplishments, but because she was even more daring in her respect for a culture so very different from her own. — Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl ABOUT GERTRUDE BELL Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (1868-1926) was part proper Victorian and part modern woman. The granddaughter of a wealthy British ironmaster, Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, Gertrude’s life took a tragic turn when her mother died. Ger- trude was only 3 years old. She formed an extremely close relationship with her father, Sir Hugh Bell, which remained unshakable until her death. A brilliant, chain-smoking rebel, Gertrude attended Oxford University and was the first woman to receive a First (i.e. Highest Honors) in Modern History. She was fluent in more than 5 languages and ulti- mately published 6 books, including an English translation of the 14th century Persian poet Hafez. Bell’s life was a fascinating series of trailblazing “firsts”. She was the first person to climb all the peaks of the Engel- hörner range in the Swiss Alps and one Alpine peak is named Gertrudspitze, after her. She was the first woman to do a solo journey into the uncharted Arabian desert (traveling by camel for 1500 miles across Central Arabia in 1914) and she provided her colleague T.E.Lawrence (a.k.a.Lawrence of Arabia) with the tribal notes and maps he used during the Arab Revolt. In 1915, she was recruited by British Military Intelligence becoming the first female military intelligence officer, Major Miss Bell. The only woman with a diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the only woman (invited by Winston Churchill) at the Cairo Conference in 1921, Bell was the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. And yet, in spite of all of her accomplishments, she has been virtually written out of the history. Bell suffered 2 tragic love affairs and never married. She was an explorer searching for her own place in the world, but after a lifetime of straddling two cultures, she ultimately felt comfortable in neither. She died at age 58 from an over- dose of sleeping pills. She is buried in Baghdad. 3 | LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD ©THE GERTRUDE BELL ARCHIVE, NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY 4 | LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD GERTRUDE BELL TIMELINE 1868 1904 1917 1922 July 14th. Gertrude Bell embarks on Bell is recruited to Bell starts drawing the Margaret Lowthian the first of several work as Oriental southern borders of Bell is born at her archaeological Secretary in the colonial Iraq. She is appointed grandfather’s home expeditions in the office in Baghdad Honorary Director of in Washington New Middle East, taking under Sir Percy Cox. Antiquities. Hall, County Durham, photographs and She is awarded the England. documenting the Commander of the 1923 ancient sites. British Empire (CBE). Bell launches plans for 1871 the Iraq Museum. Bell’s mother dies at 1907 1918 age 27; Gertrude is three Bell publishes The November 11th. 1925 years old. Desert and the Sown, Armistice is signed and Bell visits England for one of seven books she WWI ends. the last time.