Haarlems Weekblad, Nov. 3, 2020
HAARLEM The American-Dutch documentary ‘Mata Hari, The Naked Spy’, which was to be screened in Dutch cinemas this year, will now have its Dutch premiere online because of Corona. The film by the Haarlem filmmaker Machiel Amorison and the American filmmaker Susan Wolf, who together were responsible for the direction and production, can be downloaded and streamed from November via the website www.mataharithenakedspy.com .
NEW LOOK AT LIFE The idea for the film comes from the Haarlem filmmaker Machiel Amorison. For years he has been mesmerized by the figure of Margaretha Zelle (Mata Hari), who was told at birthdays that she had been in the class of his great-grandmother in Leeuwarden. The film was made in 2017, one hundred years after Mata Hari’s death, when personal letters from the beginning of the last century and war documents from 1917 became available that gave a new perspective on her life. Amorison: “When she wrote those letters around 1903 and 1904, she was in the middle of a divorce and was in danger of losing her daughter Non, after her son Norman had died a few years earlier. The letters tell the story of a troubled mother, even before she became known as a dancer and spy. ” Read More
