The National Gallery of Art is hosting an Environmental Film Festival screening of GERTRUDE BELL: LETTERS FROM BAGHDAD on Saturday, March 25 at 3:00 pm in the East Building Auditorium. The screening is free and reservations are not required. Filmmakers will be there for Q&A.
Introduced by Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl
One of the most powerful figures to emerge in the Middle East before and during World War I was a British spy, explorer, writer, and dynamo named Gertrude Bell — the “female Lawrence of Arabia” who in many respects was more influential than her colleague T. E. Lawrence. Letters from Baghdad reveals Bell’s unusual story through historical footage recently unearthed in private archives, and chronicles her journey into both an uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctums of British colonial power. Tilda Swinton reads from Bell’s letters, diaries, and other primary documents as the film makes a profound statement about a woman who not only mastered the Arabic language but studied the region’s rich cultural legacies while setting a course for the future of the Middle East. (Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl, 2016, 95 minutes)