online screening
Letters from Baghdad
as part of Decolonizing the Screen film review
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Letters from Baghdad
- directed by Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum, UK 2016, 95’
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- Tilda Swinton as the producer and, most of all, the voice of Gertrude Bell – one of the most important women of the early twentieth century, at least within the British Empire – Bell was a young archaeologist and explorer who travelled in the Middle East, documenting the lives of many tribes and cultures. She had a key role after World War I, when the fate of the region was being determined. In Letters from Baghdad, she speaks in her own words, taken from the letters she sent home. This political and spy story is also told with hundreds of historical archives, including Bell’s pictures. The documentary is a fascinating, insightful (self-)portrait of Bell – sometimes referred to as “the female Lawrence of Arabia”-, as well as a record of a complex colonial perspective.
