Page 5 - MFF Tab

Thursday, April 27, 2017 Montclair Film Festival Page C-5 ‘Letters’ reveals explorer Getrude Bell
‘Letters from Baghdad’
by GWEN OREL orel@montclairlocal.news
Archival footage, check.
Voiceover, by famous actress, check.
Talking heads, check.
Talking heads who died 85 years ago—
Wait!
T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) appears in
Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbühl’s feature docu- mentary, “Letters from Baghdad,” giving his opinion of Gertrude Bell?
Bell was a Victorian woman who traveled extensively in the Middle East, and even helped establish the new country of Iraq after World War I. She died in 1926 at the age of 58.
The directors talked to us from London, where the lm was having a premiere. “Letters from Baghdad” will have a theatrical release in New York City on June 2.
Krayenbühl said that while she and Oelbaum origi- nally thought they would make a ction feature, they were “stunned and incredibly thrilled” when they saw the beautiful archival footage that was available. There were also expressive letters from Bell.
Early on, said Oelbaum, “We knew we needed more than Gertrude Bell’s voice. If we only had Bell talking about her experiences, it would have less reach in being a view of the colonial o ce, and of the establishment of Iraq.” So she and Krayenbühl made a lm as though they were interviewing individuals about Bell, about three years after she’d died.
COURTESY MONTCLAIR FILM FESTIVAL
Gertrude Bell, an Edwardian explorer, braves the desert.
The pair received two NEH grants for the lm, and worked on putting together three years of primary source materials.
The movie is a co-production with the United King- dom, France, and the United States. The directors shot the interviews on 16-mm lm, so it would blend into the archival footage, but, said Oelbaum, “We did not in- tend to confuse people. We set up the lm not only to get people to think about contemporary relevance and parallels, and we also made a point of saying that all the dialogue is taken from primary source material.”
Krayenbühl said that people do get sucked in, and then “at some point become aware that ‘wait a second,
Tuesday, May 2, 7:30 p.m. Cinema 505, 505 Bloom eld Ave.
this can’t be.’” Others understand the convention right from the start.
“The cinematic experience is very important,” she continued. “Often archival footage looks really crappy. Some people asked us if we shot the scenes in Baghdad.” They didn’t, but they did have the archives rescan the negatives to achieve a crisp look, she said.
When the women rst chose Bell for their subject, Iraq was not in the headlines so much, Oelbaum said. “Bell was contradictory. She presented one face to her colleagues around her but then a very di erent and sometimes vulnerable face to her family.”
And, said both women, she’s still relatively un- known.
“A recent biography, Scott Anderson’s ‘Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East’ doesn’t mention Gertrude Bell even in a footnote.” Anderson has seen the lm, and been very supportive, Oelbaum said.
So why is Bell forgotten?
Priya Satia, a professor of British history at Stan- ford, suggested to Oelbaum that for decades, going out into the desert was a test of British masculinity.
“So when Gertrude Bell did it, all of a sudden it di- minished the men who had done it,” Oelbaum explained.
Bell was mostly written out of history.
Film series, panel look behind the ‘fake news’
‘True or False?’
by GWEN OREL orel@montclairlocal.news
Stick a pin in a Whole Foods on a map, draw a circle around it, and that’s where you’ll have a community that have is- sues with vaccination.
That’s what an epidemiologist told Seth Mnookin, the author of “The Pan- ic Virus.” Mnookin appears in the short lm “Vaccines: An Unhealthy Skepti- cism.”
Mnookin says that the epidemiolo- gist was being facetious, but his point is that even knowing that the theory about vaccines causing autism stems from a doctor whose study was tainted and who has since lost his license hasn’t prevent- ed communities from buying into the notion.
“Vaccines” is one of six lms in the shorts block “True or False? The Lure
of the False Narrative.” After the lm showing, there will be a Q&A, and short- ly after that there will be a panel conver- sation at Montclair Kimberley Academy Upper School, titled “True or False? Re- porting in The ‘Fake News’ Era.”
The series and panel are curated by RetroReport, which produces short doc- umentaries that aim to tell the story be- hind the news. These events represent a new partnership between MFF and Ret- ro Report. “We try to bring context and perspective to headlines today, re-ex- amining how we got here,” said Kyra Darnton, executive producer of Retro Report, which launched nearly four years ago. The New York Times distrib- utes the videos.
One of the lms shown is “Trump and the War on Leaks,” which looks at how presidents Nixon, Obama and Trump have dealt with the press. The other
lms to be shown are “The Superpreda- tor Scare,” “Unraveling Zero Tolerance,” “Liebeck V. McDonald’s: The Big Burn,” and “JFK to Pizzagate: Shadows of Con- spiracy.”
The shorts block came to the Mont- clair Film Festival through Sianne Gar- lick, a Montclair resident and senior producer, who had been to the festival, and met MFF Vice President Luke Park- er Bowles. Garlick and Darnton have both worked at 60 Minutes.
The lms, said Darnton, “look back at conspiracy theories through history, and what they can tell us of the rise to- day of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts.’ It’s about the lure that conspiracy theo- ries can have on the American imagina- tion, and why.”
The lm about vaccines is over a year old and still relevant, Darnton said: “It’s a good summary of what we’re talking
The Lure of the Fake Narrative Sunday, April 30, 3 p.m. Bellevue 2, 260 Bellevue Ave.
Reporting in the Age of ‘Fake News’ (with: Jonathan Alter, Jim Axelrod, Sarah Blustain; Joe Klein, Clyde Haberman moderating) Sunday, April 30, 5 p.m., MKA Upper School, 6 Lloyd Road
about. When emotions triumph over facts, what do you do?”
The lms set the stage for the panel discussion, which looks less at the fu- ture than at how journalists should ght misinformation going forward, she said. No lms will be shown.
Said Garlick, the panel asks, “How do you work in a time when the president calls you the enemy, and the public may not trust you?”