Sarah Palin movie opens in hotbed state Iowa

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin looks back at a reporter during her visit to Yankee Seafood Cooperative in Seabrook, New Hampshire June 2, 2011.

PELLA, Iowa (Reuters) - A visit to Iowa by Republican Sarah Palin on Tuesday is either a timely political move to fuel speculation about a potential 2012 presidential run or simply an effort to take advantage of her star power.

Or maybe it's both.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, was to attend the premiere of a flattering documentary about her, "The Undefeated," in the small Iowa town of Pella on Tuesday night.

She is visiting a day after Michele Bachmann, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who is often compared to Palin, launched her own presidential campaign in Iowa. The Midwestern state holds the first contest on the road to the Republican 2012 presidential nomination.

Palin has carefully left the door open to a campaign. Her appearance in Iowa was likely to encourage those who think the former Alaska governor still might jump into the wide-open race.

Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, a mini-celebrity in her own right, showed her ability to create political buzz by saying on Fox News that her mother had made up her mind already about whether to seek the nomination and that she would like to see Sarah Palin run.

"She definitely knows," Bristol Palin said when asked whether Sarah Palin had made up her mind. She said the decision would remain within the family for now.

Palin launched a "One Nation" bus tour in late May of the eastern United States and plans are said to be in the works for another tour at some point.

The new film is likely to keep Palin in the spotlight, much as her reality TV show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," did earlier this year.

The documentary traces Palin's rise from working on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska that she co-owns with her husband to important political office.

It shows her taking on vested interests, said the film's writer and director, Stephen Bannon.

"She's not part of any social or cultural or political elite," he said.

If Palin were to run, she and Bachmann would likely be competing for the same social conservative voters who are powerful in Iowa, whose caucuses next February are the first voting contest of the 2012 nomination battle.

(Additional reporting by Kay Henderson; Editing by Vicki Allen)