LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD
In Person: Filmmaker Sabine Krayenbühl with Q&A and Garden reception (Friday 7pm show)
Members $11 / Public $16
The extraordinary and dramatic story of Gertrude Bell, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. She shaped the modern Middle East after World War I in ways that still reverberate today. More influential than her friend and colleague Lawrence of Arabia, Bell helped draw the borders of Iraq and established the Iraq Museum. Why has she been written out of history?
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 intimate 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.
Sabine Krayenbühl is an award-winning editor with over 20 documentaries and narrative features to her credit, many of which have premiered at prestigious festivals around the world. Her work includes the Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nominated My Architect for which she received an American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Award nomination. Other credits include Mad Hot Ballroom, The Bridge, Picasso and Braque Go To The Movies (Produced by Martin Scorsese), and Jennifer Fox’s Emmy nominated My Reincarnation. Krayenbühl has a BFA from NYU’S Tisch School of the Arts and is a long-term member of New York Women in Film and Television.
