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We have been steaming up the river all the morning, through a familiar landscape of
palm groves and Arab huts with apricot trees blooming here and there in untidy mud
and walled gardens - I'm so glad to see it all again and I feel as if I were in my own
country once moreNow it remains to be seen whether they find a job for me or send
me away without
delay
Gertrude Bell, March 1916

Dear Friends,
Womens History Month
2016 marked the 100th
anniversary of Gertrude
Bells arrival in Basra, via
the Shatt Al-Arab River,
where she began the
political work that would
shape post-WWI Iraq. Bell
was hired as an official
member of the Indian Expeditionary Force-D and became the
first female British Military Intelligence officer. General Sir Gilbert
F. Clayton broke ranks with his colleagues and insisted that Bell
was more qualified for this position than the male officer who was
to be hired. Clayton wrote in a memo to General Sir Reginald
Wingate: "Major Blaker is very intelligentbut has never been in
the East before. I went to Sir Percy and explained that the
Bureau was a Foreign Office affair, and insisted that its
correspondent must be intimate with the work of the political
side...Miss Bell is already doing the tribal and geographical work
the Bureau needs...Sir Percy eventually agreed to alter his

decision."

Project Update...
We are thrilled to announce that we have nearly finished the
film and are now submitting it to international film festivals.
Check out our new teaser.

Update from our partners & advisors...

We are pleased to
welcome our new
partner, the
American Sephardi
Federation. ASF is
a membership
organization that
preserves and
promotes the rich
mosaic culture of
Jews from the
Middle East and
throughout the
greater Sephardic
Diaspora. We are
also delighted that David E. R. Dangoor, Honorary Consul
General of Sweden in New York, has joined the Letters from
Baghdad team and provided major funding for our film.

Our partner I.B. Tauris has recently

published "In Search of Kings and
Conquerors: Gertrude Bell and
the Archeology of the Middle
East" by Dr. Lisa Cooper, an
Associate Professor of Near Eastern
Art & Archaeology at the University
of British Columbia. It is the first indepth look at Gertrude Bell's work in
the field of archaeology.
Don't miss the wonderful exhibit at
Great North Museum: Hancock in
Newcastle-on-Tyne "The
Extraordinary Gertrude Bell", cocurated by our advisor and manager of the Gertrude Bell
Photographic Archive at Newcastle University, Dr. Mark Jackson.
(until May 3rd, 2016)

We need your support!

Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution on our
website to help pay for marketing and distribution, and launch
the film to a world-wide audience.
Spread the word about Letters from Baghdad by following us
on Twitter and liking our Facebook page.
Thank you so much!

About the film...

Directed by Sabine Krayenbhl and Zeva Oelbaum, Letters
From Baghdad tells the story of Gertrude Bell who left the
confines of Edwardian England to seek freedom and
independence in the Arabian desert and became the most
powerful woman of her day in the British Empire. In the aftermath
of WWI, Bell helped to draw the borders of modern Iraq, was
instrumental in installing its first king and founded the Iraq
Museum that was infamously ransacked in 2003. The first
feature-length documentary on Gertrude Bell, the film will explore
the choices that trail blazing women make, and how decisions
made by Bell and her colleagues continue to influence current

events in the Middle East and the world today.

Be sure to join us on: Facebook | Twitter | Official Website |
LFB Trailer

At top: Basrah 'Ashar Creek, Iraq, 1916, Photograph by Gertrude Bell.

At middle: Gertrude Bell with King Faisal and British officers at
Ctesiphon1921
Photographs courtesy of the Gertrude Bell Archives, Newcastle University

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