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Pipeline Cinema

Pipeline Cinema

The Cultural Infrastructure of Oil Extraction in Iran and Iraq

Mona Damluji

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2026 by Mona Damluji

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.

All other rights reserved.

Suggested citation: Damluji, M. Pipeline Cinema: The Cultural Infrastructure of Oil Extraction in Iran and Iraq. Oakland: University of California Press, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.255

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Damluji, Mona author

Title: Pipeline cinema : the cultural infrastructure of oil extraction in Iran and Iraq / Mona Damluji.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2026] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025030382 (print) | LCCN 2025030383 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520424296 cloth | ISBN 9780520424302 paperback | ISBN 9780520424326 ebook

Subjects: LCSH: Industrial films—Iran—History | Industrial films—Iraq— History | Petroleum industry and trade—Social aspects—Iran | Petroleum industry and trade—Social aspects—Iraq

Classification: LCC TR894 .D36 2025 (print) | LCC TR894 (ebook)

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025030382

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025030383

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For my parents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Introduction

1. “Oil on the Screen”: The Origins of Petroleum Industry Film Use in Iran

2. The Cinematic Pipeline: Oil Infrastructure and the Prestige Documentary in Iraq

3. Oil’s Cultural Workers: Textures and Tensions of the Iraq Petroleum Company Film Unit

4. Audiences of Oil: Film Exhibition on the Pipeline

Epilogue

Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It takes a village to raise a child. And, in my experience, it is no different when writing a book. An admirable village of far-flung friends, family, students, and colleagues helped to bring this book into being. They have been with me in late nights, early mornings, quiet reading rooms, noisy coffee shops, revelatory writing retreats, quick phone calls, long Zoom calls, Whatsapp messages, signal chats, and dance breaks. I am grateful for this village and the fact that, while writing can feel very lonely, I was never actually alone in writing this book.

As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, I received early encouragement for pursuing this project (even when it did not quite fit the objectives of my doctoral degree) from Donald Moore, Zeynep Gursel, Ed Dimendberg, Minoo Moallem, Teresa Caldeira, Michael Watts, and Peter Limbrick, all wonderful mentors whose enthusiasm and sage words have stayed with me throughout the years. During this formative time and ever since, Reem Alissa, Hiba Bou Akar, Michael Gonzales, Joseph Godlewski, Kahwee Lee, Gautam Bhan, Alex Shafran, and Ricardo Cardoso pushed forward my thinking and lifted my spirits.

Initial research for this project was supported by the Social Science Research Council, through their marvelous (and sadly now defunct) Dissertation Proposal Development and International Dissertation Research Fellowships. While I was in the United Kingdom, Luke McKernan in the British Library and Patrick Russell and James Taylor at the British Film Institute guided me towards key sources and encouraged me to write the book I was looking for that had not yet been written. Archivists Peter Housego, Joanne Burman, and Bethan Thomas at the BP archive and Ben Mayfield at the BP Video Library have genially responded to my many requests over the past seventeen years, first while in the UK and later from my desk in California. I am honored that Flora MacDonald entrusted me with letters and photographs of her late husband Peter Kelly, whose stories and personal collection of papers have been essential.

The Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wheaton College in Massachusetts gave me the gift of breathing room and time to pursue further research that formed the basis for this book. At Wheaton, I was surrounded by delightful colleagues turned friends, including Kim Miller, Touba Ghadessi, Ellen McBreen, Tripp Evans, and Josh Stegner, who opened doors so that I could teach and write about underrepresented cinema histories on my own terms. I was fortunate to work with many exceptional students there and two dazzling research assistants, Lena Sawyer and Selassie Davies. Also during this time, thanks to Imre Szeman, I found an intellectual home for my emergent ideas in the Petrocultures research group.

While at UC Santa Barbara, I received funding support and teaching releases to see through this book project from the National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, the Center for Middle East Studies, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Office of Research, and the Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship. Janet Walker called to offer me my dream job in UCSB’s Department of Film and Media Studies, offering critical guidance in the early stage of my career and further expanding my understanding of oil and cinema’s imbricated histories. Over the past eight years, my department colleagues have supported my progress with this book in tangible and intangible ways, in particular Laila Shereen Sakr, Peter Bloom, Ross Melnick, Bhaskar Sarkar, Jennifer Holt, as well as dynamo Savannah Parison and her administrative team. My research assistants Soha Saghazadeh, Gehad Abaza, Mary Michael, Aleah Kiley, and Dominic Charles gave crucial support to this project, seeming at times as invested as I was in archival minutiae, and have been a joy to work with. My thanks to Dominic Boyer, Hannah Appel, Arthur Mason, Nelida Fuccaro, Omar Jabary Salamanca, Zina Jawadi, Zack Al-Witri, Kaveh Askari, Michael Streicher Metzger, Kylie Walters, Tristram Wolff, Peter Adkins, and Malcolm Cook for inviting me to share my research in the constructive atmospheres they curated through workshops, colloquia, seminars, and symposia hosted in their centers and campuses.

I cannot overstate the importance of my writing accountability partners over the years whose regular check-ins kept me moving forward, bird by bird. Pages of this book first materialized in the warm company of Maria Jose Aragon, Rebecca Powers, and Elana Resnik, with whom I learned to set aside time to write together. I discovered a welcoming community of writers at UCSB thanks to Barbara Walker, Inés Casillas, and Trish Fancher, who devoted time and energy to creating inclusive writing environments for faculty through the Write to Unite program. My thanks as well to Sami Hermez, Alda Benjamin, Hilary Falb, Silvi Toska, Maria Ballesteros, and my writing coaches at the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity Faculty Success Program.

Key pieces of the book came together while I was a guest in other people’s homes. During my research stays, Maha and Muna Khogali, Lily Cooc Vyas and Keenan Vyas, Georgina and Hassan Damluji, and Tala Omari took me into their London flats without hesitation, nourishing me with homecooked meals. In California, Jane Ward’s writing retreat was a magical incubator where I was able to move through the most intimidating parts of revising the manuscript (and begin to find joy in the process) with tremendous care and support from Althea Wassow, Charmaine Chua, and Jade Sasser. Rachael and Griffin Barkley graciously hosted me in their home on three separate occasions, making it possible for me to write in long uninterrupted stretches and meet major deadlines.

Many generous readers helped my manuscript to take shape. While we have never lived in the same place, Bridget Guarasci has been by my side from the get-go, listening and helping form nascent ideas, reading early chapter drafts with care, and inspiring new directions for meaningful collective work. Bridget and Zainab Saleh, my first peer readers, brought together the Iraq Working Group, including Omar Sirri, Kali Rubaii, Nida Alahmad, Karem Ussakli, and Sara Farhan, who provided invaluable feedback on many parts of this book over the years. Nomi Stone and Rose Skelton’s field studio was an invitation to imagine a bridge between the freedom of creative prose and rigor of academic writing and where I drafted the book’s prologue.

During my manuscript workshop, Stephanie LeMenager, Haidee Wasson, Priya Jaikumar, and Arbella Bet-Shlimon were truly supportive interlocutors and provided insightful feedback that clarified and strengthened the book’s core arguments and contributions. Brian Jacobson, another (anonymous) reviewer and an unnamed member of the faculty editorial board provided thorough and thoughtful comments on the manuscript that I submitted to UC Press, guiding my efforts to hone each chapter. Megan Pugh, my superb developmental editor (a.k.a. my book midwife), has been there through it all—first pages, manuscript workshop, final revisions—imparting her talent for making every step smoother and every sentence sharper. Sanaz Sohrabi’s piercing questions and archival imaginings have been important touchstones, and I am lucky to be able to include her artistic work on the book’s cover. My editor Raina Polivka at UC Press has been a guiding light throughout this journey, championing the book from the start and addressing each of my questions with precision and care. I am grateful to Sam Warren, Emily Park, Ben Alexander, and Chloe Wong at UC Press for shepherding my book through the final stages of publication and Paige MacKay, Sarah Osment, and the design and production team for all their finishing touches.

I have had tremendous fortune in finding my way into community with exemplary scholars who have fortified me during the journey to finishing this book. Before, after, and during our exciting years of collaboration in the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Energy Justice in Global Perspective, Javiera Barandiaran, Stephen Miescher, and David Pellow offered precious advice and modeled imaginative approaches to publicly engaged scholarship. Bishnu Ghosh nurtured many aspects of this book, my thinking, and my well-being along the way, from proposal to publication. Sherene Seikaly has been a steadfast beacon and generous friend, always present to consult, read, discuss, edit, practice, revise, and dream of a better world together. Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Shiva Balaghi, Lisa Park, Walid Afifi, Bassam Bamieh, Elisabeth Weber, Maysoon Pachachi, Sameer Farooq, Rosie Bsheer, Saamira Halabi, Jeff Hoelle, Ranjit Deshmukh, Grace Wu, and many others have inspired and buoyed me, especially in the toughest moments of the past two years.

The road to writing this book has been made infinitely better thanks to extraordinary friends. As we traveled on parallel tracks through early careers and all the rest, Clare Gupta, Rose MacLean, Kate McDonald, Swati Rana, and Rachael King have each listened to me, laughed with me, and guided me to making better book proposals and parenting decisions. Almost daily, I have leaned on the shoulders of Florence Chien, Saima Akhtar, Lauren Simpson Hoppe, Kate Zyskowski, Kathy Minh Bach, Emily Medal, Carley Rencher Chen, and Tara Jarrahi, and without fail they helped bring me back to myself. As an academic worker who is also a parent of young children, I can attest that this book would not be possible without our family’s trusted caregivers, Linda Rouhas, Nicole Ellis, and Shannon Carew. I hold deep gratitude for the abundance of care I have personally received from Jolene Guilliams and Madalina Bortes throughout the past several years. My brothers Omar and Nadim and mother-in-law Limon Chen have shown up to love and support me and my kids more times than I can remember.

I dedicate this book to my parents, Gina and Namir, who have dedicated their lives to me and my brothers. Without question, my mom is my most devoted cheerleader and guardian, there whenever I need her. My father has spent countless hours beside me sharing stories, watching films, translating phrases, answering my questions and, when he cannot answer himself, finding the person who can. Jia Ching, my partner in all things, has been a steady and loving presence in my life from the first moment I stepped into the archive. Our years of connection and conversation are everywhere in this book—its ideas, shape, and language. Our children, Layaal and Zayn, are my best teachers and have given me the greatest motivation imaginable to write these pages.

PROLOGUE

I never expected to meet my great-grandfather, who died in Baghdad six years before I was born, and certainly not in the archives of British Petroleum.1 In the crisp chill of London’s waning autumn days, I tucked into one of the hushed reading rooms at the School of Oriental and African Studies to dig into my research on what used to be called the Iraq Petroleum Company, beginning with stacks of its eponymous company magazine, Iraq Petroleum. I wanted to understand how the company crafted stories about Iraq and its people, and so, stationed at a broad, heavy desk, I slowly leafed through the colorful pages, enjoying the awkward rhythms of the archive—stretches of tedium punctuated by sporadic moments of discovery. I jotted down page numbers of articles on mid-century housing schemes in Basra, Baghdad, and Kirkuk. I populated rows below a header on my spreadsheet—“articles to scan”—with mentions of these and other noteworthy items: saturated photos of modernist architecture, details of art exhibitions, profiles of the Museum of Antiquities and Houses of Parliament, plans for new bridges and oil company towns, accounts of international trade fairs, and, as I was especially excited to discover, film reviews.

Eventually, a 1956 issue of the magazine introduced me to “The Gourmet.” The table of contents, promising “some favourite dishes” from Iraq, lured me to page 29, where photographs showed the crackling skin of a stuffed lamb roast decorated with charred tomatoes. The still attached sheep’s head with a mouthful of parsley unsettled me slightly, and I glanced away from the photograph to the text. I could easily have missed the byline, which read: “described by William Subhiyah.” The author of the column was my great-grandfather. I was mystified. Had I somehow conjured this encounter with my ancestor? Had the fact of his employment at the oil company magazine ever been mentioned to me? Had I once been told, and then forgotten, that Jiddu William wrote about food for the Iraq Petroleum Company? My parents had described my mother’s grandfather as a Lebanese immigrant who made his living in Baghdad as an English teacher and who, at one point, had tutored a young King Faisal II. But there he was, decades later, in a reading room in London, sharing his thoughts on the pleasures of eating.

FIGURE 1. William Subhiyah in his Baghdad home, in Iraq Petroleum, April 1958, 24. Reproduced from the bp archive.

As I continued reading, I kept encountering my great-grandfather’s byline. I realized that he had authored a series of articles for the oil magazine between 1955 and 1959 on a variety of subjects, from cookery to pottery. His prose was playful, intimate, and frequently tended toward sarcasm, a distinct style in the otherwise staid corporate publication. In his article on Iraqi cuisine, for example, he playfully preempted his critics: “A word of warning, I feel is necessary for those who will try to cook my recipes for the first time; if the result of your work tastes queer, blame your palate and not my recipe.”2 In another article, he tenderly described an afternoon when his aunt fed him her famous knefeh in Aleppo. In still another, he shared photographs of his garden in Baghdad, and recounted conversations with several different men whom he had hired at various times to help cultivate it. This was the first time I had seen a photo of the house that my great-grandparents had lived in when my mother was a young child: a simple brick façade draped with flowering vines and fronted by a small concrete patio made verdant by an abundance of potted trees, flowers, and native shrubs. An article he wrote about air-conditioning showed a picture of William seated comfortably, smoking a pipe and reading in his home study. It was the first color photograph I had ever seen of my great-grandfather, and it moved me to tears.

FIGURE 2. Salma Subhiyah with her daughters Amira and Samira along with two unnamed household members in their Baghdad garden, in Iraq Petroleum, June 1955, 24. Reproduced from the bp archive.

Yet, no archival experience could top the sense of wonder I experienced upon discovering an article from 1955 that included several pages of photographs, featuring my family members around a table of Lebanese delicacies. My great-grandmother Salma, her daughters Samira and Amira, and their two housekeepers were photographed individually and as a group, seated together in my great-grandparents’ garden around an abundant table of home-cooked dishes. The article describes in mouthwatering detail how the recipes featured in the photographs—baba ghanoush, mahshi bi zayt (dolma), tabbouli, chicken and rice, lamb kabob, and kibbi bi sinyeh—are prepared, served, and enjoyed.

The offerings shown in the oil magazine mirror those on my own family dinner table, and I closely identify with Jiddu William’s passions for cooking, eating, and feeding people he loved. I also recognize the norms of hospitality that he felt compelled to spell out for his readers. “We always cook much more than we can consume at one meal. Even if we expect no guests, people may call unexpectedly while we are eating and, by our traditional laws of hospitality, we are required to ask them to partake of our food,” he declared. “To prove this, call at any Middle Eastern house about meal-time and see if you are not sincerely invited to the meal. Moreover, if you are invited to a luncheon or a dinner party, you can always take along one or two friends with you without having to warn your host beforehand. Such a guest is known as your ‘slipper’ (Qabqab) and will receive the same welcome as yourself.”3 Through such acknowledgments, William provided a cultural education of sorts to the oil company magazine’s largely foreign readership base, while nodding toward local Arab readers with subtle jokes. Appropriately, the article recognizes my great-grandmother’s labor in a subsequent byline that reads, “All these dishes were prepared for photography by Sitt Salma Subhiyah.”

Their daughter, my great-aunt Samira, pictured as a young teenager sitting cross-legged on the grass wearing a flannel and blue jeans, holds up a round platter of kibbi. This is the same dish that she had kneaded, pressed, and cooked for me with her own hands countless times throughout my own childhood. When I sat down with Auntie Samira to ask her about the article, she shared a vague recollection of the day, and then casually mentioned that she had herself worked for the oil company public relations office—two years as a typist, a job she said she owed to family connections. During our conversation, she explained how much she enjoyed her work there and the camaraderie of the office atmosphere.

When my research began, I’d often thought about the oil company rather rigidly, as a kind of abstract monolith, and a villainous one at that. But when the BP archive opened windows into my own family history, the vast distance I initially imagined existing between myself and my research collapsed unexpectedly. While this personal realization did not blunt my critique of the fossil fuel industry’s structural role in causing global warning and ongoing perpetration of environmental injustices around the world, it did open my mind to the nuance and humanistic perspective required to understand the complex social and cultural landscapes shaped through histories of oil extraction. In Iraq, this of course included members of my family who were paid to participate in the work of making oil extraction a culturally productive encounter: crafting stories, images, and even meals that associated the foreign oil company with worldliness, pleasure, and local knowledge.

As an educated middle-class man of Lebanese origin living in Baghdad, my great-grandfather attained significant social capital from doing this work. The IPC’s magazines reached an international readership of tens of thousands of subscribers throughout the Middle East and Britain. In the pages of Iraq Petroleum and, as I later found out, in his regular column in the Iraq Times, William further developed his authorial voice as a humorist and cultural critic. Notably, his Iraq Times column included a review of the IPC’s cine-magazine Beladuna, providing some of the only detailed commentary on the films that I have found published in either English or Arabic. That review reveals William’s proclivity to write about the oil company’s undertakings in a tone that lightly mocked—as opposed to blatantly parroting or outright pushing against—corporate rhetoric. William, like so many of the people in this book, occupied a position within the cultural apparatus of the oil company that straddled complicity and subversion.

“Every book has precedents outside of its apparent archive,” Stephanie LeMenager writes, adding her insight that “even academic books often grow, if circuitously, from the heart.”4 The heart-centered experience of encountering my ancestors in the oil archive led me to ask different and more urgent questions of the archive and to recognize its irregularities in proffering an abundance of certain voices and silencing others. The complexities of my personal discovery within the corporate archive pushed me to consider how we can hold together a critique of the violence of neocolonial extraction with recognition of the range of human experiences associated with it, including generative cultural engagement. While writing this book, my attention was continually drawn to individuals who participated in the cultural work of oil extraction, namely, men who simultaneously collaborated with neocolonial institutions and expressed resistance to subordination within them. Who were they and what motivated them to work within the foreign oil company? How did they navigate the racial and class-based hierarchies imposed by the company on its workers? How were their voices and visions subsumed as corporate propaganda or otherwise? Were they able to reclaim platforms of oil company media through meaningful acts of creative expression? These questions have shaped the histories of oil culture I write in this book. I wish I could ask my great-grandfather these questions, but, in his absence, I have tried to piece together the stories that exist along the grain of the oil archive.5

Introduction

The Palestinian poet, novelist, visual artist, and cultural critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra began his career with the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) when an old friend barged into his home unannounced. It was 1952, and Jabra was enjoying a leisurely afternoon in the company of his beloved, Lamia, when Michael Clarke, a documentary filmmaker from London, showed up and asked Jabra to translate the film script for the IPC’s first sponsored film—which Clarke had written—from English into Arabic. It had been seven years since the two men had last seen each other. They had become friends in their twenties, in Jerusalem, during the waning years of the British occupation of Palestine (which lasted from 1917 until 1948). Clarke, then an English soldier, and Jabra, an emerging Palestinian writer, were both Cambridge-educated, and after they met through a common acquaintance, they spent long evenings talking about literature and politics.1 After Clarke’s military deployment in Palestine ended, the two lost touch.

In 1948, in what Palestinians mark as the inception of the ongoing Nakba, or Catastrophe, Zionist forces declared the establishment of the State of Israel, expelling at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages. This included Jabra’s family, who were pushed out of their home in West Jerusalem. In exile, he eventually found a position as a college professor at the University of Baghdad in Iraq, where he remained for most of his life, immersed in a thriving milieu of modernist writers, artists, poets, architects, and musicians. He helped to found the Modern Baghdad Art Group and came into his own as a writer, penning his most internationally renowned literary contributions—including dozens of novels, short stories, and poems that explored themes of exile and self-determination as well as cultural criticism and Arabic translations of works by Shakespeare, William Faulkner, and Oscar Wilde.2 Meanwhile, Clarke returned to England, where he fell in with the group of filmmakers associated with John Grierson and the British Documentary Film Movement. The London-based group made its mark producing government propaganda films before turning toward the business of industrially sponsored documentaries.3 Clarke specialized in documenting large-scale infrastructural projects, writing and directing films sponsored by the National Coal Board and later joining British Transport Films.4

Clarke relocated temporarily to Iraq in 1952 as part of the first documentary sponsored by the IPC—a multinational oil corporation headquartered in London that held exclusive rights to Iraq’s oil between 1925 and 1960. The mastermind behind the IPC’s film use was producer Arthur Elton, a major figure in the British Documentary Film Movement who worked closely with British Petroleum (BP, formerly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) and Anglo-Dutch Shell, both IPC stakeholders. Elton hired Clarke to direct the film, along with a small crew of two British and one Iraqi cameramen, who convened in Baghdad to commence filming of the documentary about the construction of the IPC’s new thirty-inch pipeline—the world’s largest at the time—connecting the oil fields of Kirkuk, Iraq, to the Mediterranean port in Banias, Syria. The pipeline film was a centerpiece of the oil company’s public relations campaign, intended to frame the foreign oil company and its infrastructure as essential to Iraq’s national prosperity. Its title was The Third River.

The title reimagined the man-made pipeline as a river of oil akin to the Tigris and Euphrates. Those two life-giving arteries preceded and eventually sustained human settlement in Mesopotamia, whose name comes from the Greek for “the land between two rivers.” The twin Tigris and Euphrates define modern-day Iraq’s geographical and ecological contours along the north-south axis of water flow, from the watershed of the Taurus Mountains to the river mouth at the Persian Gulf. When the IPC branded its thirty-inch pipeline as “The Third River,” the company sought to reorient the cartography of modern Iraq according to an east-west axis defined by oil infrastructure stretching from reservoirs of crude in Kirkuk to terminal ports on the Mediterranean Sea. It also suggested that the pipeline, like the actual rivers before it, could give rise to a new civilization.

The IPC and the Iraqi government had reason to mount a storytelling campaign about oil in Iraq in 1952. For more than two decades, British oil companies had maintained a stranglehold on Iraq’s oil, beginning with the colonial mandate in Iraq that was established in conjunction with the Hashemite monarchy in 1921, laying the ground for Britain’s domination of the country’s political and economic affairs. Continuing into the era of seeming independence after 1932, Britain’s outsized influence remained undiminished. The IPC loomed large in Iraq, as one of the country’s largest employers and a source of government income that continually exploited its land, labor, and petroleum. But in 1946 and 1948, Iraqis mobilized in unprecedented numbers to protest the ongoing allowances made to Britain in Iraq, and the foreign oil company was a chief target. Then in 1951, uprisings in Iran led to oil nationalization there and the ousting of the British oil company from Abadan. Amidst the general atmosphere of animosity toward foreign oil companies, the IPC (according to its profile in the journal Film User) aspired to present the “Third River” pipeline story to Iraqi audiences in order to “reconcile the oil company to the population” and “to prevent Persian happenings repeating themselves.”5 For Clarke, this meant that his artfully scripted commentary required translation to Arabic.6

FIGURE 3. Front cover of The Third River promotional booklet, 1953. Reproduced from the bp archive.

Jabra accepted Clarke’s job offer, and the two worked together closely on the final Arabic commentary for The Third River.7 After the film’s release, the IPC established a local film unit based in Iraq to continue promoting the narrative of transformative, state-driven development. The company also released films, magazines, and reports, and Jabra remained involved with its public relations efforts in Iraq. He described his contributions to the company’s cinematic productions as “another means of expression, besides writing and painting,” that was “sometimes no less exciting to my imagination and pleasure.”8 He also served as editor for the oil company’s Arabic magazine, Ahl al Naft (People of Oil), which featured stories about cultural subjects like literature, food, fashion, design, and travel in addition to reporting and opinions on economic developments (including but not limited to the oil industry) in the IPC’s areas of operation for a general readership of company employees and their friends and families.9 In his memoirs, Jabra describes his role at the company as “an enjoyable job at a good salary that gave Lamia the opportunity to leave her teaching later,” adding, “I worked in a civilized atmosphere that helped me continue my intellectual activities as I wished, for about a quarter of a century.”10 Jabra was one of many Arabs who worked as writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, musicians, artists, poets, and photographers for the company’s various attempts to convince Iraqis that the oil industry was benefiting them. Their labor was exploited—used in an attempt to protect the IPC’s bottom line—but they were also benefiting from significant professional opportunities, possibilities for creative expression, and meaningful social exchange with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and political orientations.

Ultimately, oil companies made material contributions toward the development of film culture in Iraq. But the IPC’s approach underestimated public discontent with British domination over the country’s political and economic affairs. For decades, the Hashemite government violently repressed demonstrations of open resistance to the status quo, most notably during al-Wathba uprising in 1948, until a military coup with popular support led by the Free Officers overthrew the British-installed monarchy in the 1958 revolution. While its status was greatly diminished, the IPC maintained a foothold in the newly established Republic of Iraq. But the oil company’s efforts to control the public narrative, even with the help of local mediators, could not counter the material realities that workers experienced and people revolted against. In 1972, the Ba‘th government decidedly nationalized the IPC’s remaining assets in Iraq.

The pipeline cinema produced before these sea changes may not have been effective propaganda, but it was still a critical site in which the complex relationship between the foreign oil company, creative labor, and audiences took shape. This book explores the intertwined histories of the oil industry and cinema in mid-century Iraq and—for a shorter period of time—Iran, beginning with the earliest film use by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC, later AIOC and then BP) in 1921 and ending with the dissolution of the IPC in 1972. As these companies hungrily expanded their physical operations, they partnered with filmmakers to celebrate their infrastructural expansions as harbingers of postcolonial nation-building, development, and modernization schemes.

The pipelines that sprang up across Iran and Iraq were physical infrastructure—or, as Lisa Parks puts it, “stuff you can kick”—designed for resource extraction based on labor exploitation.11 And yet, their significance has transcended their physicality. Pipelines symbolize brute forces of extractivism at work, joining critical junctures of extractive capitalism—oil fields, refineries, storage tanks, and shipping docks—and enabling them.12 They came to symbolize, variously, national progress, development, imperialism, and a place to resist imperialism.13 In other words, pipelines and other oil infrastructure occupy a contested discursive terrain in addition to the land and water they pierce through. Cultural production in the service of oil companies— including the making and circulation of films, magazines, art, photography, and museum exhibitions—was, for the better part of the twentieth century, considered necessary for managing public perceptions of oil company infrastructure and operations.14 Like the physical operations of the oil industry, the cultural work of normalizing and naturalizing extractive industries generates networks of dedicated labor, capital, equipment, expertise, and knowledge, which, taken together, I describe as cultural infrastructure.

At times, actual pipelines are central to this book’s study of oil’s cultural infrastructure—as with the “Third River” in Iraq. The figure of the pipeline also informs the book, offering an analogous framework for thinking about how cultural infrastructure works to extract, refine, and distribute narratives intended to normalize and naturalize oil extraction under the condition of neocolonialism. The making of films along and about oil pipelines was similar to the work of extraction itself: relying on labor hierarchies that placed foreign experts at the helm of production units above local creative labor. Oil companies used images of their oil workers as well as their cultural workers to represent the face of operations, while also subjecting them to racially stratified conditions of employment and compensation. The circulation of oil company films also mimicked the flow of the pipeline: filmed on location in oil-producing countries and pumped out to the world. Films created in service of oil companies circulated widely—in some instances guided by the spatial footprint of oil infrastructure, screened in the company towns housing oil workers stationed along pipelines, but also making their way into theaters in nearby cities and abroad to Britain, Sweden, and the United States. Pipeline Cinema chronicles these previously unexamined cultural contours of oil infrastructure—wells, pumping stations, and refineries that became places of cinematic encounter, where films would be produced and exhibited in attempts to sway public opinion in ways beneficial to foreign oil companies.

OIL EXTRACTION IN IRAN AND IRAQ

Pipeline Cinema is about the cultural work that has been necessary to make oil extraction possible.15 This book takes Stephanie LeMenager’s rousing and straightforward notion of petromodernity, or modern ways of living rooted in petroleum-based energy systems, as a generative point of departure, and unfolds the conundrum of oil culture in places where extractive infrastructure has hollowed land and reconfigured life.16 A fuller contemplation of the contradictions inherent in petromodernity must include deeper attention to the cultural infrastructures that uphold systems of oil extraction in the Global South and amplification of stories of people upon whose backs “cheap and uninterrupted” access to petroleum is imagined and realized.17 In this book, the aim is not merely to add color or dimension to the notion of petromodernity by including social and political contexts outside of the North American and European purview, but rather to insist that cultures of oil consumption cannot be isolated from colonial and neocolonial conditions of petroleum extraction that have unfolded in specific places.18

This is primarily a study of oil culture in Iraq, but that story begins in Iran, where the AIOC piloted the first instances of industrial film use in the region. The AIOC’s film operations up until oil nationalization, and particularly the company’s missteps, were foundational in determining the strategy that the IPC took up in Iraq, steered by Arthur Elton and Film Centre. The cultural aspects of the oil industry in Iran and Iraq remain understudied despite the centrality of these sites to global histories of oil: during the 1950s the world’s largest oil refinery was in Khuzestan and the world’s largest oil pipeline originated in Kirkuk.19 In tracing a history that moves across national boundaries, this book takes up Timothy Mitchell’s urging to “follow the oil” and reveals through-lines of industrial film use and its tactical evolution across the borders of sovereign nation-states subject to British overreach into political and economic affairs.20 Pipeline Cinema also examines histories of resistance to oil imperialism in the ethnically diverse provinces of Khuzestan and Kirkuk, calling attention to the interconnectedness of struggles against neocolonial extraction within neighboring national contexts.

At the geologic level, this history goes back millennia, when decomposed masses of ancient marine organisms accumulated in dark vicious pools beneath the land circumscribing the Persian Gulf and extending into northern Iraq. It entered human history with the discovery of seepages by ancient peoples and later inhabitants of the area who used bitumen as adhesive, mortar, caulk, lubricant, and fuel.21 At the turn of the twentieth century, European investors began exploring the region’s potential for commercial petroleum extraction, and development of the oil industry in the neighboring provinces of Khuzestan and Kirkuk proceeded in connection to one another. In coordination with the national governments in Iran and Iraq established in the aftermath of the fall of Qajar and Ottoman rule, foreign oil companies headquartered in London would dominate the terms and conditions of neocolonial extraction in the region. A British geological survey in 1899 detailed the enormous potential of rich petroleum deposits in the region that would become northern Iraq, confirmed two years later by a German commission that described “a veritable ‘lake of petroleum’ of almost inexhaustible supply.” To prevent the petroleum from flooding the European market and compromising its own investments, Deutsche Bank negotiated concessions with the Ottoman government to develop oil fields there that it had no intention of realizing.22 Meanwhile, British investors had identified oil in southwestern Iran as a strategic investment.23

In 1901, Mozaffar ad-Din Shah of the Qajar Dynasty in Iran signed an agreement with the British financier William Knox D’Arcy that granted the foreigner exclusive rights to potential oil reservoirs beneath the limey-shale formations that characterized the hilly landscape of Khuzestan Province.24 A group led by D’Arcy drilled the first productive well seven years later at Masjed Soleyman and subsequently founded the APOC in 1909. The company built an extensive network of roads, bridges, and oil infrastructure to move oil to market. Within two years, a pumping station on the Tembi River was built to feed the oil pipeline from Masjed Soleyman. The pipeline careened over steep hills and snaked southward through Khuzestan for 138 miles, intersecting waterways and bypassing remote villages until it terminated in Abadan, where the APOC constructed its massive refinery on the Bahmanshir estuary of the Karun River flowing into the Persian Gulf.25 The British Royal Navy officially transitioned its fleet from coal power to oil in 1911, and just three years later the British government purchased 51 percent of shares in APOC, giving it veto power as the majority shareholder and guaranteeing supply to the Royal Navy throughout the First World War.26

The APOC also became the majority stakeholder in the multinational Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), which held concessions for all “petroleum resources discovered, and to be discovered” in Mosul and Baghdad Provinces.27 Both headquartered in London and under control of the British government, APOC and TPC were positioned to explore and exploit oil from the regions of Persia and Mesopotamia. Following the war, the Sykes-Picot Agreement enacted a colonial partitioning of the former Ottoman Empire, designating British and French mandates and “zones of influence” that would later determine Iraq’s national borders.28 In 1921, British authorities ordained King Faisal I, the Hashemite monarch, as Iraq’s formal ruler. The first productive oil well in Iraq was established in the porous limestone at Baba Gurgur (six miles northwest of Kirkuk) in 1927.29 Two years on, the company changed its name to the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) and—even while it lacked intentions to actively produce oil in Iraq—continued building infrastructure including derricks, roads, housing, and workshops.30

The APOC, Shell, and the IPC’s French and American shareholders remained vigilant in keeping production of Iraq’s abundant petroleum at bay to avoid a market surplus that would cause the price of oil to plummet. Iraq’s nominal status as an independent nation-state was recognized by the League of Nations in 1932; however, Britain retained military bases and advisory positions in the government that guaranteed its influence in shaping the country’s political, military, and economic decisions according to its own interest.31 By 1934, continued pressure from the Iraqi government on the IPC to increase production of its proven oil fields led to the construction of two twelve-inch pipelines and a dozen pumping stations between Kirkuk and oil terminals on the Mediterranean at Haifa in Palestine (under British control) and Tripoli in Lebanon (under French control). Throughout the two subsequent decades, the IPC maintained the undeveloped capacity of Iraq’s oil reserves in order to use Iraq as “a swing producer” that balanced global oil demand by increasing production only as necessary to guarantee that the British–American oil cartel maximized its profits.32 British support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine added another insult that fueled opposition to British hegemony in Arab countries. In Iraq, the IPC embodied the British domination of resource extraction and labor exploitation. During the 1940s, worker- and student-led uprisings in Iraq were met with state-sanctioned violence to protect the status quo.

By this time, the APOC had changed its name to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and established Abadan as the site of the world’s largest and most productive oil refinery. Poor labor conditions and meager profits inspired numerous worker-led strikes and generated broad support among Iranians for oil nationalization. In 1951, Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh championed the movement to nationalize Iran’s oil facilities, forcing the AIOC to evacuate Abadan, which led to Britain’s call for an international boycott of Iranian oil. The resounding rejection of the status quo of foreign control in Iran coupled with the Arabian American Oil Company’s (Aramco) unprecedented profit-sharing agreement in Saudi Arabia put the Iraqi government in a strong position to pressure the IPC for a dramatic renegotiation of its existing financial arrangement. The outcome was a fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement between the IPC and the Iraqi government. Iraq’s petroleum output increased dramatically to meet the demand created by Iran’s production hiatus and the newly established Iraq Development Board oversaw the allocation of 70 percent of national oil revenue into national infrastructure and development projects.33

During this period, the IPC and Hashemite government aligned their public relations efforts to convey a narrative centered on the direct link between oil production and national progress. Images of industrial modernization and social developments—such as increased access to schools and hospitals as well as women’s participation in the labor force—were frequently used as evidence for the claim that Iraqi modernity depended on oil extraction. In addition to illustrated reports and two magazine publications, film use was central in this campaign, which continued until the 1958 July Revolution ended British domination over Iraq’s affairs. With the establishment of the Republic of Iraq, Abdel Karim Qasim mitigated the IPC’s ability to dictate the country’s oil production, stopping short of nationalization, which the Ba‘th government finalized in 1972. Yet, nationalization was by no means a triumphal ending to Iraq’s oil story, as historians such as Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt and Arbella Bet-Shlimon have documented.34 Ultimately, the Ba‘th party exiled figures like Khair al-Din Haseeb and others who led negotiations of oil nationalization in pursuit of a vision of resource sovereignty and carried out lethal campaigns against the Kurdish and other minorities in northern Iraq. Indeed, oil nationalization under the Ba‘th party marked the opening of another chapter in Iraq’s tumultuous and violent history of oil extraction.

FROM PIPELINES TO PIPELINE CINEMA

Britain’s decisive energy transition to petroleum for military purposes on the eve of World War I opened the door for a wider and global socioeconomic transition. Postwar economies and militaries of the wealthiest nation-states in Europe and North America rapidly developed dependencies on petroleum and its derivatives—plastic and pesticides. In order to maintain the status quo of neocolonial operations after the Second World War, foreign oil companies sought acquiescence to their total monopoly on oil resources in sovereign nation-states like Iran and Iraq. Cinema was attractive to oil companies as a persuasive and far-reaching medium for their messaging that offered possibilities for transmitting (first to shareholders and later viewers worldwide) curated moving images from operating areas and manipulating audience responses to them with the addition of voiceovers, musical score, and selective diegetic sound.35 Wherever oil could be drilled, there was something to be filmed.36 Films were perceived as having the ability to reach across obstacles of language and literacy, a further advantage for companies operating throughout regions in which people used multiple and diverse languages and dialects.37 Oil companies’ global reach, deep pockets, and endless political obstacles thus made them ideal patrons of cinematic production and exhibition, or (in industry terms) “film use,” which allured sponsors with its potential to give them control of the oil story.

As the British Documentary Film Movement extended beyond government patronage to cultivate relationships with industrial sponsors, Grierson, Elton, and other experts in technical and artistic aspects of documentary filmmaking stood at the ready with proposals for industrial film use that invited the interest of oil company executives. This led to the near universal adoption of film use into oil company operations and public relations.38 Oil companies used films for internal organizational purposes, and also produced documentaries that aspired to educate general audiences about petroleum’s primacy in modern life and make favorable images of oil infrastructure and operations abundantly visible to mass audiences.39 Films sponsored by oil have included instructional films, commercials, animated short films for children, narrative films, and documentaries “that formed part of a larger cultural project to transform the image of oil exploitation.”40 Films in this latter category, described in industry terms as “prestige” films, were intended for general audiences in public cinemas and like newsreels were typically screened prior to narrative feature films.41 The subject matter of prestige films pertained to, but also often extended beyond, the oil industry—including science, technology, history, and art. Oil company sponsors, with Shell as the leading example, invested in filmmaking that associated the oil industry with broader cultural, scientific, and educational contributions and thus bolstered sponsors’ reputations as virtuous corporate actors.

The British-led transition to petroleum-based energy systems, Timothy Mitchell has argued, was driven in large part by a desire on the part of the government to quell the power of labor movements born out of domestic coal production.42 As this book emphasizes, the proliferation of British-owned pipelines and their constitutive nodes of infrastructure in Iran, Iraq, and other oil-producing regions was in fact met with an upsurge of labor action and local uprisings calling for an end to imperialism that ultimately led to oil nationalization. In this atmosphere, foreign oil companies were vilified as imperialist institutions. Having already adopted film use to document their infrastructural networks in Khuzestan, Burma, and Venezuela primarily for company stakeholders, the AIOC and Shell were poised to incorporate cinematic production and exhibition into efforts to contradict anti-imperialist discourse through the sponsorship of documentary films that aligned image-driven narratives of modernization and national progress with their extractive operations.43

Oil companies were determined to control oil and its story. Film use was thus an essential aspect of public relations efforts in oil-producing states where they endeavored to create new audiences for oil, projecting oil extraction as a harbinger of national progress and modernity.44 For oil companies whose operations stretched between the metropolis and remote foothills, the portability of cameras and audio recording equipment that could be carried to remote areas whether by car, airplane, ship, or raft was a necessary practical advantage. Cameras could go anywhere the oil company could go and bring together moving images that unified the entire extractive process from “well to pump” as a cinematic experience. Ultimately, these films could be screened widely for mass audiences, and repeatedly, whether in the city or the oil field. The glitz and glamour of theatrical exhibitions was augmented by the proliferation and portability of 16mm projection, which ensured that oil company films could easily reach audiences of oil workers in remote areas.45

The APOC made its first documentary in 1921, ten years after opening its first pipeline, to transmit moving images of its infrastructure and operations in Iran to stockholders in Britain.46 Oil company film use began in southwestern Iran primarily for the purpose of documenting investments, and evolved over the next decade into a field of industrial filmmaking that targeted general audiences in cinemas, film festivals, classrooms, and film societies throughout Britain and Europe. This shift was abetted by the increasing involvement of figures in the British Documentary Film Movement. In consultation with John Grierson, Shell initiated an expansive program of documentary sponsorship in 1933 that included industrial films for specialized audiences as well as documentaries for general audiences. By 1938, Grierson established Film Centre in London to serve as a go-between for filmmakers and corporate sponsors, with Shell being the first and largest client.47 Through Film Centre, Grierson and his protégé Arthur Elton in London would advocate corporate sponsorship of quality films covering a broad range of topics that could be enjoyed widely by cinemagoers, arguing that this approach would do more to bolster a company’s reputation than product placement and advertisement.48

In Iran, the AIOC also pursued attempts to produce new films during the 1930s and 1940s, but with limited success due to government resistance. The oil company used film primarily to curry favor with the Pahlavi regime, showcasing the Shah’s modernization schemes for mostly British audiences. In 1951, the AIOC sponsored the prestige documentary Persian Story, but the production schedule of the London-based film crew was cut short by the worker-led uprising that ultimately led to oil nationalization and the ouster of the oil company from Iran, rocking global oil markets. Amid this upheaval in the industry, Elton pushed for the proliferation of oil company film units, akin to the Colonial Film Unit, inside oil-producing countries including Iraq, Nigeria, and Venezuela.49 In Iraq, historic uprisings led by oil workers produced conditions that were increasingly inhospitable for the British-controlled oil company. The IPC pursued a film campaign, under Elton’s guidance, to “prevent” the movement to nationalization in Iran from taking hold in Iraq.50 In practice, the aims of the IPC’s film use included the persuasion of general audiences as well as oil workers. Rather than privileging audiences of foreign stakeholders and government dignitaries, the IPC would orient its public relations efforts in Iraq, using cinema, toward audiences inside the country—simultaneously reaching broad viewership among Iraqi cinemagoers and specific audiences of oil workers. Moreover, the films and the promotional media surrounding their circulation projected misleading images of harmonious work environments that undermined Iraqi employees’ experiences of discrimination and exploitation and sought to absolve the foreign corporation.

Elton advised the IPC to establish a dedicated film unit in Baghdad that would make Arabic-language films to educate Iraqis about benefits that oil-funded development schemes provided to their country. The confluence of foreign advisors to the oil company, foreign filmmakers running the unit, local creative professionals (Jabra among them), film trainees, imported equipment, and dedicated spaces for film exhibition on and off the pipeline constituted the cultural infrastructure of the oil company, which contributed to the social and economic footprint of oil extraction in Iraq alongside the IPC’s physical operations. The company distributed its prestige documentaries with Arabic commentary and the Arabic cine-magazine Beladuna to general audiences in Iraqi cities and among their labor force in company towns along the IPC pipeline.51 For oil workers who called the land and villages surrounding oil-producing areas home, the discordance between the on-screen spectacle of the industry and lived reality was glaringly apparent. For many Iraqis, the IPC’s position and presence in their country signified the continuation of Britain’s imperial power from the days of its colonial mandate. In point of fact, the IPC was a multinational conglomerate and thus more than British in composition. But public perceptions of the company within Iraq reflected the reality of neocolonial dynamics at play: local resources and labor conscripted for profits elsewhere.

METHODS OF DISCOVERY

This book originated with my first viewing of a 1954 film on YouTube in 2007.52 Ageless Iraq is an IPC-sponsored prestige documentary that presents a positivist account of modernization and development in mid-century Iraq with notable attention to social and cultural change. The film’s message, in short, is that the confluence of Western ideologies and increased oil income provided the country with ideal conditions for its people to move away from traditional life ways and progress toward a more prosperous future. Combining Technicolor montages, voiceover narration, and an upbeat score, the aesthetic and formal attributes of Ageless Iraq are consistent with the celebratory depictions of industrial development characteristic of the British Documentary Movement’s postwar oeuvre. Ageless Iraq insists that oil promises to modernize Iraq, according to presumed Western ideals of civilizational progress, and as a text, the film reproduces orientalist binaries that ascribe human beings according to normative and mutually exclusive categories of East–West, Orient–Occident, and tradition–modernity.

Apart from the apparent prejudices of this oil propaganda film, what ultimately drew me back to it again and again were questions that could not be easily answered. What compelled neocolonial oil companies in Iraq and other oil-producing countries of the Global South to make such documentaries? Who was involved in their making? Who watched the films? What were the social and political stakes of oil company film sponsorship and cinematic representations that claimed to document the culture and history of countries they operated in? Pursuing what Thomas Elsaesser describes as the “first line of inquiry” in the study of nonfiction film, these questions guided my research across various incomplete and slippery archives.53

Within the BP archive, which houses records kept by the now-defunct IPC and AIOC, I was able to access company memoranda, internal correspondences, film treatments, production budgets, internal reports, and newspaper clippings that helped me to construct a partial picture of oil company public relations activities and film use in Iran and Iraq.54 The film archives that pertain to this study are dispersed between the BP Video Library (BPVL) in London, a separate facility that is home to the audio-visual collection of BP- and AIOC-sponsored films,55 and the British Film Institute (BFI), where viewing copies of a limited subset of the IPC films are available to researchers.56 The BFI is also where I accessed documentation related to the publicity and circulation of AIOC and IPC films and recorded oral histories with British filmmakers who worked for the IPC.57

Corporate oil archives, shaded as they were by the company’s priorities and prejudices, could only tell me so much. While Iranian, Iraqi, and Arab contributors to the oil companies’ film units and publication relations were sometimes named in film credits or various printed matter, much about their experience remained unavailable. Thus, the corporate archive constituted a starting point and not an end to uncovering how local creative labor and audiences experienced and shaped pipeline cinema in Iran and Iraq. Fortunately, Hamid Naficy devoted much of his career to chronicling the social history of filmmaking within Iran, offering some detailed accounts of AIOC and later oil consortium film productions, based on his interviews with Iranian filmmakers, newspapers, and other primary sources.58

No comparable publication exists for the case of oil company film use in Iraq.59 I frequently consulted Hanna Batatu’s The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, a requisite source for any historian of Iraq, which offers extensive documentation and illuminating interpretation of anticolonial and other political struggles in Iraq that imbricated and informed the IPC film unit’s existence.60 Woven throughout the book, I draw together a mix of primary sources that have made it possible to read along and the against the grain of the oil archive as it pertains to the individuals who shaped the world of pipeline cinema in Iraq: recorded interviews, memoirs, online newspapers, and informal archives of remembering on social media—specifically Facebook pages where friends and families of deceased Iraqi filmmakers share photographs and memories.61 I consulted U.S. government records held in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, which helped to inform a fuller picture of film distribution in Iraq. Using newspaper and magazine articles found in online archives and clippings collected in public relations office records and attached to government and company correspondences, I was able to trace further details around the geographic and social context of film production and exhibition in Iraq. However, in regard to audience reception, the absence of coverage in Iraq’s Arabic newspapers around the release of oil company films pointed to the limited effectiveness of the oil company’s efforts to shape a broader discourse and influence public opinion in Iraq.62

In 2012, I interviewed two filmmakers involved with the IPC film unit, Muhammad Shukri Jameel and Peter Kelly, both in their eighties at the time. My conversations with Kelly, a British filmmaker and founding member of the IPC film unit (1952–54), led to my eventual discovery of his well-preserved personal collection of scripts, notes, reports, memoranda, photographs, and correspondences.63 The personal letters from Kelly’s colleagues (addressed to him after his departure from the unit) include the voices of Abdul Latif Saleh and Yousef Andrews, two of the Iraqi trainees in the film unit whose stories are prominently featured throughout chapter 3.64 Turning to a diversity of sources has been critical to informing the history of pipeline cinema in the pages that follow—ensuring that the limits of the oil company archive have not constrained the scope of study, casting light on the motives of figures (like Arthur Elton) who appear prominently in the colonial-corporate archive, and lifting out stories and voices of the oil industry’s unrecognized cultural workers.

BOOK STRUCTURE

The first chapter in this book, “‘Oil on the Screen’: The Origins of Petroleum Industry Film Use in Iran,” presents an early cinematic history of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, later BP) over three decades, from the earliest instance of corporate film use in 1921 to document its operations in Khuzestan to the making of Persian Story amidst the labor uprisings that led to oil nationalization in 1951. While Britain never formally colonized Iran, it nonetheless dominated the development of Iranian oil. The oil company made films foremost for British audiences in order to shape public perception of the company and recast tenuous political circumstances on the ground in favorable terms. The company’s earliest films documenting the extent of oil operations in Khuzestan (southwestern Iran) were made for nontheatrical exhibition for company stakeholders. The eventual release of the company’s first prestige film for public exhibition in 1928 signaled the company’s awareness of cinema’s potential to create an oil narrative.

Filmmaking relied on British production companies capturing footage on location in Khuzestan to be cut into documentaries titled and narrated in English. Moreover, BP’s film use held up a mirror to the company’s extractive operations. An oil worker strike in 1929 and political changes in the 1930s flagged the problematic nature of the company’s extractive approach to oil production and the vulnerabilities it caused for the company. This resulted in the oil company’s shift toward an explicit public relations agenda that incorporated appeasement of the Iranian regime into its vision for film use. The shift was informed in large part by Shell’s turn toward film sponsorship as a critical aspect of its public relations and turn away from films as direct advertising. The chapter charts the establishment of Film Centre in London as an institution that dovetailed ambitions of John Grierson and the British documentary film movement with British oil company operations in formerly colonized countries with oil resources.

In neighboring Iraq, where the AIOC held a major stake in the IPC, oil company filmmaking and exhibition found footing amidst a burgeoning cultural sphere. Temporary open-air and indoor cinemas appeared throughout the country during the 1920s and 1930s, and in 1945 the first film studio opened in Baghdad. By the 1940s, cinema-going was popular across Iraq’s major cities. By 1944, Iraq had twenty-seven operating theaters, which included private venues and ten open-air theaters established by the IPC.65 The second chapter in this book, “The Cinematic Pipeline: Oil Infrastructure and the Prestige Documentary in Iraq,” traces how, beginning in 1952, the Iraq Petroleum Company—in which Shell and the AIOC were equal shareholders—initiated its film use with the political objective of centering discourses of national progress and Iraqi modernity in order to avoid repeating missteps in Iran. Steered by Film Centre’s Arthur Elton, the IPC sponsored a debut prestige documentary that set out to provide meaning and cultural coherence for oil infrastructure connected to the people and landscapes it traversed. The chapter focuses on the making of the film The Third River, which entailed the recruitment and assembling of transnational networks of creative labor in Iraq. The chapter further provides a close reading of the documentary’s cartographic ambitions to refigure the foreign-owned and -operated oil pipeline into a national resource as bountiful and life-giving as the Tigris and Euphrates.

The third chapter, “Oil’s Cultural Workers: Textures and Tensions of the Iraq Petroleum Company Film Unit,” examines the oil company’s efforts to distinguish its film use as a commitment to making films, as Kelly wrote in a promotional pamphlet, “in and about Iraq, in Arabic, by a Film Unit in which Iraqi technicians are working and Iraqi young men are being trained in all branches of factual filmmaking.”66 The presentation of the film unit and its serial cine-magazine Beladuna as “truly Iraqi” was couched within the agenda of the multinational foreign corporation with a vital stake in shaping the political economy of fossil fuel extraction in postmandate Iraq.

In Baghdad, where the Iraq Petroleum Company sponsored its film unit between 1953 and 1959, Iraqi and Arab men were recruited for their expertise as cinematographers and directors or for their potential as trainees under the tutelage of the British filmmakers in charge of the unit. The chapter explores the textures and tensions that shaped the individual and collective experiences of the participation in the film unit, with attention to working conditions, creative expression, and friendship. The chapter traces the dissolution of the film unit through the 1958 July Revolution in Iraq that deposed the Hashemite government and established the Republic of Iraq, which absorbed the expertise and equipment of the film unit into the state apparatus under the General Organization of Cinema and Theater. The chapter also follows the return of Elton to Iran, advising film use by the newly established oil consortium, leading to the sponsorship of the Golestan Film Workshop.

While narrative filmmaking and cinematic exhibition had already emerged in Iraq by 1945 with the establishment of the Baghdad Studio, the oil company sponsored the first experiments in documentary filmmaking (in the British tradition) and accelerated the reach of cinema exhibition throughout the country, particularly in the northern region along its oil pipeline. IPC-sponsored films were among the earliest documentaries filmed in Iraq and the first to focus on the modern nation-state. The Third River, Beladuna, and the IPC’s other sponsored films with Arabic commentary screened theatrically and nontheatrically in cinemas throughout Iraq, including in worker settlements along the pipeline.

Like oil, the company routed the distribution of films along the path of its pipeline. Oil workers sat collectively for screenings of training films and films for entertainment screened by the company in makeshift and eventually purpose-built exhibition spaces, as the filmmaker Sanaz Sohrabi has said, “designating workers the audience of their own activities” and immersing them in image worlds of industry as well as fantasy worlds imported from Hollywood.67 “Audiences of Oil: Film Exhibition on the Pipeline,” the fourth chapter, follows the oil company’s film distribution operations in Iraq from nontheatrical projection of 16mm films for oil workers to theatrical presentations in advance of imported Hollywood features and reveals the shortcomings and hubris of the oil company’s vision for effectively mediating public perceptions of oil in its favor.

The book concludes with an epilogue that discusses the afterlives of oil- sponsored films, specifically in the context of the aftermath of the U.S.- and British-led invasion of Iraq from 2003. In the context of war and occupation, it chronicles the digitization of the IPC’s Ageless Iraq and its surge in popularity among online viewers since 2008. The oil company’s cinematic version of Iraq resurfaced on YouTube, news websites, and Facebook and, to this day, reaches a global viewership unconstrained by the material demands of cinematic exhibition.

Today’s audiences watch the film, not in crowded theaters or in a huddle around a 16mm projector, but isolated in front of small glowing screens on their personal devices. Tens of thousands of viewers have commented on, liked, and shared clips and screenshots of the IPC’s cinematic images of mid-century Iraq, drawn to its promise of a prosperous future for the country. For some, including Iraqis displaced by the atrocious violences of war and brutality over generations, the oil company’s vision of modern Iraq stirs up nostalgia for a better time. Yet, the oil company that produced these cinematic images of Iraq is also a profiteer of Iraq’s destruction after 2003. BP has reentered Iraq’s oil fields and reaped hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in profits.68 Meanwhile, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s house in Baghdad, where he famously hosted salons and displayed a magnificent gallery of mid-century Iraqi artwork, was destroyed by a car bomb during the civil war that erupted under conditions created by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.69 As a cultural luminary whose career tied him to the oil industry, Jabra’s story navigated the prevailing tensions inherent in pipeline cinema, where creative possibility—to make art, forge friendships, and nurture aspirations—was always underwritten by an inherently destructive purpose: to justify and normalize neocolonial power, economic inequality, resource exploitation, and political violence.

1

“Oil on the Screen”

The Origins of Petroleum Industry Film Use in Iran

The Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) produced its first film in 1921, ten years after the completion of its first oil pipeline.1 The untitled silent reel, produced by a London-based film unit, Messers McDowel’s Commercial Films Ltd., documented AIOC operations in Iran’s southwestern province of Khuzestan, where the company (later known as BP) began and, by 1921, pumped two million tons of crude oil from its initial well in Masjed Soleyman to the refinery in Abadan, soon to be the largest in the world. In this nascent instance of oil industry film use, infrastructural development is the main story: a wide shot of light railway under construction to facilitate transport of equipment and supplies to the oil field cuts to a view of a power transmission pylon being erected, and then mountainside demolition for a new road being laid over an old caravan route. Persian, Arab, and Indian workers are also part of this industrial landscape: building kerosene tins and loading them onto mules, digging trenches and laying down pipeline, setting and detonating explosives, and standing in wait. Just months before the filming began, thousands of Indian and Iranian workers went on strike (the first of many) to protest the APOC’s dismal labor conditions. Consistent with the oil company’s exploitative relations with its workforce, its premiere film production focused attention on the machinery of industry while neglecting the story of the human beings who made the machines run. For seventy-five minutes, with only two intertitles, the five reels of black-and-white 35mm footage present an extensive montage that charts existing operations according to the physical nodes of infrastructural network and constructs a vision of Khuzestan as an ever-expanding landscape of oil extraction.2

The film in its entirety was never released for public exhibition. Though it was recut for internal archiving purposes in 1939 under the title Anglo-Iranian Operations in Iran, 1921, its primary function seems to have been as a blueprint for the oil company’s first officially sponsored documentary, a ninety-minute silent six-reel film that was shot in the same locations four years later, in 1925: The Persian Oil Industry: The Story of the Great National Enterprise.3 The next year, in a decision that signaled a shift from in the company’s sense of film’s utility for record-keeping toward an awareness of its potential to influence public knowledge and perception, it produced a much shorter twenty-eight-minute film using footage from The Persian Oil Industry, made specifically for theatrical exhibition under the new title In the Land of the Shah.

Altogether, the AIOC produced five separate major films of increasing polish about the southwestern region of Iran over three decades.4 The company’s early silent reels of footage documenting its operations in Khuzestan for internal audiences were predecessors of later sponsored documentaries, which were a hallmark of petroleum industry public relations by mid-century. The oil company recognized its need for public relations: it was building gargantuan networks of infrastructure—roads, railroads, transmission lines, derricks, pipelines, refineries, ports, and housing—under the provisions of a controversial 1901 concession, in which Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar had granted exclusive rights to the exploration and extraction of Iran’s oil to William Knox D’Arcy. Subsequently, though Britain never established formal colonial rule in Persia, it relied on the oil extracted there for its military power and industrial modernization, and was the majority stakeholder in the AIOC. To build, operate, and maintain the massive networks of infrastructure that enabled its neocolonial domination of Khuzestan, the oil company employed a massive international labor force, who were subjected to differential treatment based on colonialist hierarchies of race and ethnicity.

Oil workers did not endure the company’s abuse of power willingly. Between 1922 and 1951, oil workers in Khuzestan organized five major strikes to demand changes to the exploitative and impoverished material conditions of their labor and housing. The oil company turned to film use to redirect perceptions of its operations—first for an audience abroad, and later for selected audiences in Iran. The AIOC sought to keep attention from the public eye in Britain on infrastructural advancements of the oil industry in Iran and used moving images of productive workers on cinema screens to overshadow the reality of worker unrest on the ground. This strategy also fed into Reza Shah Pahlavi’s state-building narrative, which consolidated his increasingly authoritarian power under the image of sweeping modernization policies and secular reforms, including secularization of the judicial system, land redistribution, a new educational system, expanding women’s basic rights, and the establishment of the trans-Iranian railway. Films carried the potential to appeal to the Shah’s ego during periods of political tension between the company and the regime, the support of which the company relied upon to be able to continue suppressing worker mobilizations.

By the late 1940s, some AIOC officials began to embrace the idea of film use as a way to influence public perceptions of the oil company within Iran, but ultimately the production of its last film, Persian Story, in 1951 continued to adhere to conventions of top-down filmmaking that did not account for local audiences.5 Foreign film crews dropped into the oil-producing region with a script written by British filmmakers to shoot on location in Iran for a limited period. Footage in hand, these crews returned to Britain to cut a film intended primarily for distribution to English-speaking audiences in cinemas there and exclusive audiences of press and dignitaries in Iranian cities. Advertised in the journal Film User under the banner “Oil on the Screen,” the documentary also circulated widely in British schools, film societies, film festivals, and theatrical screenings. Moreover, the AIOC films neglected to address the perspectives and concerns of oil workers and other critical voices who insisted that the on-screen representation of copasetic labor conditions in Khuzestan was an egregious distortion that obstructed the truth of worker exploitation.

Oil had gone from being a specialized subject of interest to stakeholders to a screen spectacle for mass audiences. But in Iran, these audiences were not convinced. A worker-led anti-imperialist uprising in 1951 led to the nationalization of the oil industry. By then, the AIOC had filmed Persian Story, which it celebrated with a massive industry “film party” in an attempt to take back control of the narrative by contradicting negative perceptions about the oil company in the aftermath of its upheaval in Iran and projecting the strength of British Petroleum despite its losses.

“BEAUTIFUL FILMS OF THE OIL”

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), later the AIOC, implemented a comprehensive racialized hierarchy in its areas of operation in Khuzestan based on the norms and forms of colonial rule in India, systematically segregating and differentiating treatment of European (mostly British), Indian, Arab, and Iranian employees. Rigid structural inequality was the rule, with Europeans placed in top-ranking positions, followed by Indians recruited for “skilled” and “semiskilled” positions, and native migrant workers (particularly Bakhtiari tribesmen) who fulfilled the company’s need for “unskilled” manual labor at the bottom of the company hierarchy.6 These ranks were reenforced by segregation of spaces and amenities in company towns that followed planning practices of British colonialists in the Indian subcontinent while also resembling Jim Crow segregation in the southern United States: Iranian workers were forbidden from using cinemas, buses, and water fountains marked “Not for Iranians,” which were reserved for use by European employees.7 Subsequent British and American oil company towns in Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other oil-producing countries in the Middle East followed suit.8

FIGURE 4. An advertisement for Persian Story, 1952, in Film User, January 1953, 260.

FIGURE 5. A family living in impoverished conditions in Abadan, 1951. Published in James H. Bamberg, A History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 2, The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 448. Reproduced from the bp archive.

The APOC also meted out separate and unequal housing according to this racialized hierarchy. For European employees working in the Abadan refinery, the oil company provided family housing in bungalows and brick villas set in the lush garden landscape of the Braim district. Indian employees in Abadan received collective housing in long barracks where several men shared a single unit. In rare cases permission could be granted for family members to join Indian employees and reside together in the barracks. Initially, the APOC did not have company housing for native migrant workers, including those of Persian and Arab origin who performed “unskilled” manual labor or provided secondary services. Most resided in a settlement adjacent to the refinery, in mudbrick houses they built themselves, or shelters they assembled from bamboo and palm leaves.9 Gradually, the oil company began to provide housing to Iranian workers ranked as skilled workers. However, the conditions of housing and employment for Indian and Iranian workers remained overwhelmingly insufficient, and workers began to push back.

On December 9, 1920, three thousand Indian workers at the Abadan oil refinery went on strike to address collective grievances against the oil company. According to the labor historian Touraj Atabaki, the striking workers called for “an increase in wages, a reduction of daily working hours, additional pay for overtime, improvement of sanitary conditions, and an end to vilification and molestation of workers by staff members.”10 Iranian workers joined the strike demanding a substantial 80 percent salary increase from APOC and petitioned the national government in Tehran to step in, citing in their petitions “poor pay, inadequate facilities, dirty living conditions, and the lack of compensation in case of disability.”11 This placed enough pressure on the APOC that it conceded to a wage increase and addressed some of the collective demands, such as standardizing workers’ shifts and meal breaks.12 However, many other demands remained unmet. The testimony of one Indian employee by the name Mudliar, which was published in the Bombay Chronicle, claimed, “there is no certainty of working hours, which are sometimes as long as 10 and 12 h in a day in all weathers,” and “living accommodation provided is inadequate and a large number of people are huddled tighter in small room, incompletely furnished, by way of furniture and lights, nothing to say of cookhouses and latrines, thus making life extremely hard.”13 Less than two years later, in May of 1922, Indian and Iranian workers went on strike again. This time the oil company retaliated with punitive measures, calling on the local Sheikh Khazal to “deal with the native” (Persian) workers and swiftly repatriating two thousand Indian workers.14 This later action significantly diminished the oil company’s skilled workforce. As a result, the company began to train Iranian workers for technical jobs in workshops and the “fields.”15 Labor resistance had begun to alter the way that the APOC ran its operations on the ground.

Messers McDowel’s Commercial Films Ltd. arrived in Khuzestan in 1921, between these two strikes, to produce the APOC’s first film, which was not intended for a wide audience. Soon thereafter, however, in the winter of 1925, the oil company hired the director J. D. Kelley and a cameraman from Topical Press Film to shoot updated footage that might have potential for broader applications. Kelley was tasked with documenting infrastructural developments in Khuzestan as well as scenes featuring the local population, including the biannual migration and river crossing of the Bakhtiari tribe.16 Kelley filmed additional scenes set in the local bazaar—such as artisans doing metalwork as well as various food vendors weighing out produce and cooking kabob—and an extended sequence of tribesmen leading a caravan of mules.17 The completed silent six-reel film, The Persian Oil Industry: The Story of the Great National Enterprise (1925), was shot on 35mm and took ninety-eight minutes to screen. An abridged, three-reel, forty-five-minute edition with intertitles was edited from the original film for distribution in technical institutions and schools.18 This marked the first time the oil company engaged audiences outside its own office headquarters in London. The following year, the company decided to go further and condense the film into a single-reel version under the title In the Land of the Shah, intended specifically for exhibition in public cinemas.

Intertitles organize the black-and-white footage of The Persian Oil Industry so that the introduction of the oil industry is framed within, and in deliberate contrast to, its context in southwestern Iran. The film constructs a primitive and racialized landscape of native life as a backdrop for industrial development. Following opening scenes of the Bakhtiari migration across the Karun River, nomadic sheep herders in the hillside, artisans at the local bazaar, and crowds hurrying alongside an open sewer trench that runs through the main street of the Persian town, The Persian Oil Industry introduces the dramatic scale and contrasting views of the APOC’s buildings and construction sites along the banks of the Shatt al-Arab and Karun rivers. The shift in perspective dramatizes the radical upheaval of life on the ground for workers and their communities in Khuzestan, under the oil company’s top-down administration of regional developments and labor conditions. The remainder of the film depicts an extended montage of workers and machinery, with long takes showing the labor of locating, building, drilling, and monitoring oil set against the vastness of Khuzestan’s remote and rocky landscape.

FIGURE 6. A bustling pedestrian thoroughfare and open trench in Abadan town, in The Persian Oil Industry, 1925. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

Unlike the 1921 film, The Persian Oil Industry excludes Indian workers from the frame and focuses at length on scenes of “skilled” and “unskilled” Persian workers. This was likely because of the mass repatriation of Indian laborers and increasing pressure from Tehran on the oil company to improve conditions for Persian employees that were outcomes of the 1922 strike. Persian workers are depicted on screen doing extremely hazardous tasks without protective equipment of any kind: men set and ignite dynamite in a mountainside to open access for roadbuilding; children seal a pipe with their bare hands; workmen balance atop a half- constructed oil derrick to lift pilons into place; specialized laborers in a workshop weld machine parts and conduct mechanical labor; workers prepare kerosene tins on a factory line with fast-moving heavy machinery. The film concludes with scenes of the development of water pipes, bridges, and roads under construction in the remote new field of Gach Qaraghuli, conveying a promise of further exploration and development in Khuzestan. Not surprisingly, the film obscures the system of racial discrimination and reprehensible labor conditions upon which the APOC’s profits depended.

FIGURE 7. Child laborers sealing a pipeline with bare hands, in The Persian Oil Industry, 1925. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 8. Iranian workers balance atop an oil derrick under construction, in The Persian Oil Industry, 1925. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 9. Iranian laborers in a machine workshop, in The Persian Oil Industry, 1925. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

In 1926, the oil company released the twenty-minute documentary In the Land of the Shah, cut from footage in The Persian Oil Industry.19 In the Land of the Shah reuses intertitles and sequences from, and maintains the essence of the overall structure of, the original film, transitioning the perspective from a primitive to an industrializing landscape. But it also includes new footage for a notably different ending, with the voyage of a tanker ship from Abadan to the Queen’s Dock where the “Persian crude oil” is discharged and then refined at Llandarcy in South Wales into “motor spirit” and transported to consumers across Britain. The final scene features a car filling up at a “familiar green” BP pump station before closing with a title card displaying a direct advertisement: “BUY B. P. ETHYL FOR ANTI-KNOCK.” In other words, the film introduced audiences to the first of what oil company film officials would later refer to as an “oil well to petrol tank story,” condensing selected footage of BP’s far-reaching corporate operations into a cinematic spectacle intended to impress the average consumer with a greater knowledge of where their oil originated, and the degree of ingenuity and effort required to deliver it from the foothills of Khuzestan to their gas pump.20

Between 1926 and 1938, the APOC’s first cinematic project in its long and short versions was watched by almost one million people in Britain and Europe.21 In the Land of the Shah was shown in what company archives describe as “some hundreds” of British cinemas, and once cinema showings tapered off, the Pathescope Library continued to circulate copies of the film (in 9.5mm) to film societies, schools, and technical institutions.22 Audiences also included company stakeholders and staff. Details of the circulation of The Persian Oil Industry and In the Land of the Shah within Iran are not well documented; however, Hamid Naficy’s tome covering the social history of Iranian cinema provides an illuminating context for imagining how the film may have been screened among oil workers. Naficy traces the early history of film exhibition in Khuzestan, beginning just after the turn of the twentieth century, when the APOC showed short films and newsreels to oil workers and other local communities using mobile cinema units.23

Decades later, in 1926, the oil company began screening film programs in a cinema for its staff in Abadan.24 According to the company, the film program came about in the aftermath of a visit by the APOC chairman John Cadman to Khuzestan in 1924, during which he identified “the need for ‘recreational entertainment’ for the staff out there, and instructed Head Office in London to look into it,” leading them to solicit advice from the International Cinematograph Corporation Limited and Pathé Limited and consider providing for the first time “libraries, magic lantern lectures and entertainment films” to English employees in Abadan.25 These screenings likely took place at the Gymkhana Club’s open-air cinema, which was established for the exclusive use of the oil company’s British employees.26 Abbās Bahārlū, a film critic and historian, writes of these early cinematic encounters in southwestern Iran that “films were chiefly educational and entertaining, and not only the city’s inhabitants, but also the Iranian and Indian workers were not allowed to participate in this private screening saloon.”27 Describing the centrality of this club in the social lives of foreign staff, Bahārlū notes that “the majority of the company’s English workers, after their daily work, spent their leisure time until midnight there.”28According to BP’s records, copies of In the Land of the Shah “were sent to each of the B.P.’s Branch Managers with a request to get it shown as much as possible.”29 It is reasonable to assume that the film screened repeatedly for British staff in Abadan and other company towns throughout Khuzestan. Eventually, as Bahārlū describes, “news, sanitary, and propaganda films in the original language were shown by car and mobile apparat” in populous areas of Abadan town for the local population, and crowds gathered willingly to watch in the local village or school yard, “although people didn’t understand much from the films’ contents.”30 While it is possible that In the Land of the Shah was also screened for APOC’s Indian and Persian workers using the same mobile cinema units Bahārlū mentions, it should be noted that the film was only ever released with English subtitles and represented oil workers in the context of a well-to-tank narrative that anticipated an audience of its consumers.

In Tehran, the oil company screened In the Land of the Shah in 1928 for an audience that likely would have included an invited contingent of political dignitaries, industry officials, and members of the press, which was the typical composition of viewers for such film events. While details about the film show are not available, reference to the occurrence is documented in a series of openly critical commentaries about the oil company’s shameless self-promotion in the context of abhorrent labor conditions, published in Ettela’at, Iran’s leading newspaper at the time. The Persian-language paper had been established as a four-page daily publication in 1926, the year of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s coronation, and was sympathetic to the regime.31 In 1928, the editors ran a series of letters and editorials calling for better coverage of the labor conditions for APOC (referred to as “South Oil”) workers in Khuzestan. A September 24, 1928, letter to the editor, authored by M. Fekri, called attention to the alarming circumstances faced by Iranian employees of the oil company. Under the headline “South Oil or Iran’s National Wealth!” Fekri implored the newspaper to act on the side of those people who “every day, witness the abuses and immoderations of the company and the institutes of South Oil across different regions of Khuzestan. From close, [they] are cognizant of the Iranian workers’ deplorable conditions; and when a newspaper or a figure pays attention, they welcome it as they truly desire a remedy for this matter.”32 Ettela’at editors responded with an invitation for readers to share further information about labor conditions in Khuzestan, suggesting the paper would be willing to publish what it received.

On October 2, Ettela’at printed another scathing letter, this one from H. Khuzestani (likely a pseudonym to protect the identity of the author) who made explicit reference to the oil company film in making their point. The letter condemns the oil company for misrepresenting the conditions of oppressed workers. Khuzestani draws upon the illustrative example of the oil company’s recent film as evidence of the injustice suffered by oil workers who are silenced on screen and exploited in the field. The letter rejects the erasure of the struggle of Iranian oil workers, in the film and in the press, and calls for an end to the paper’s complicity in the company’s misrepresentation of the oil company’s operations in Iran.33 Khuzestani writes,

You, mister editor, comfortably live in Tehran, see the surface of the situation all right, observe the order, façade, and shape of administrating the southern oil company in Tehran; But you are unaware of the miseries of your Khuzestani brothers who burn in Khuzestan’s hot climate and the hell of Masjed Soleyman, and sweat blood to accommodate the means of leisure and pleasure for a number of British.

In Tehran you are shown the beautiful films of the southern oil. Of course, these films recount the enormity of the company’s edifices and buildings and the importance of its machines and oil lines; and naturally, you and your journalist colleagues enjoy them and perhaps think that this company has actually served Iran and its existence benefits the nation. But have [they] ever shown you in these films any picture of the wretchedness of that lowly Iranian worker who for three qirans a day toils in a dangerous condition and in the most calamitous fashion?

Have you ever seen in these films that in the oil region, in the south of your homeland, a group of the oil [company’s] Indian employees are superior to the Iranians and govern them? Have you ever witnessed in these films the dictatorial manner in which the managers of the southern oil [company] behave toward your fellow compatriots and how [the managers] have kept them under coercion and cruelty and anyone who breathes is immediately stifled?

Yes, the company has many machines but, in my opinion, and the opinion of all Khuzestanis who closely encounter the company’s operation, these machines have brought nothing except misery and adversity for the Iranian and felicity and leisure for a number of British and their Indian servants.

The letter emphasizes that while the most visible aspects of oil operations—a façade of impressive infrastructural and architectural constructions—are celebrated, they serve to obscure knowledge of the company’s neglect for worker safety and the abysmal circumstances of labor accommodation on the ground. The injustice of the oil company’s treatment of workers was compounded by the control it exercised over the terms of profit distribution to the country. The company’s piecemeal concessions to provide higher wages and training for some Persian workers could not mask the fundamental injustice of their conditions.

In 1927, Chairman Cadman had announced his ambition for addressing the company’s dismal reputation within the country, stating, “We want Persians to feel that our activities in Persia are not only directed toward extracting oil, but also toward developing a great national industry in the country.”34 This was a direct appeal to the Shah, who was demonstrating increasing concern over the existing terms of the company’s concession for oil exploitation. When Reza Khan had assumed the throne as Iran’s first Shah of the Pahlavi Dynasty in 1925, he quickly trained his attention toward the unjustified exploitation of national resources by the oil industry and the unfavorable terms of the D’Arcy Concession, which was established by the Qajar monarch Mozaffar al-Din in 1901 under circumstances of extraordinary debts to England, French, and Russia.35 His views were influenced in part by his first-hand experience during an official visit to the Abadan oil refinery as prime minister in 1924, in which he was reportedly displeased when he did not find one single Persian worker in the refinery. Reza Shah began pressuring the oil company to accelerate the process of “Persianization” of the workforce by training Iranian workers to replace Indian staff. By 1927, the Persian Ministry of Finance was calling for the establishment of technical institutes in the southern province to promote the technical education of Iranians for careers in the oil industry.36

In the Land of the Shah was a blatant promotion of the oil company’s investments, but its title was a deliberate attempt to flatter the Shah, and it did promote the idea that the APOC’s workforce was becoming “Persianized.” Intertitles situate and inform scene montages in the film, depicting technically trained Iranian workers as they apply their skills in the fields and in workshops: “Persian workmen erecting a steel derrick for a well”; “The apprentice shops where young Persians learn their trades”; “In the workshops Persian workmen practice every variety of mechanical craft.” However, as Kaveh Ehsani explains, the company’s changes remained on the surface, appearing “to make the oil industry more ‘Iranian’ but without making any actual concessions to workers’ legal and political rights.”37 For example, writes the historian Katayoun Shafiee, the oil company used English-language instruction for all levels of training in the company as a strategy for managing its Iranian workers, specifically “relying on technologies of difference built into the use of English and Farsi” to maintain the racially stratified labor hierarchy.38 This strategy served to manage its workforce according to principles of socioeconomic and racial difference by excluding nonelite Iranians from attaining skilled jobs, and Iranian workers went on strike multiple times to demand that Farsi instruction replace English.

After Reza Shah viewed In the Land of the Shah, he visited Khuzestan to see the oil company’s operations with his own eyes, and the company began exploring new ways to use film to appease him and thus to advance its own agenda. The APOC designated an unnamed staff member to capture footage of the Shah and his entourage on their late 1928 tour of a pumping station and the oil refinery, as well as at a reception in Abadan town and a luncheon at the Gymkhana Club, the company’s social facility for its British employees.39 This 35mm footage was exported to London and cut into APOC’s “Visit of H.I.M. Reza Shah Pahlevi to Khuzistan, November, 1928.”40 The same year, the oil company rehired J. D. Kelley of Topic Press to produce a fifteen-minute film documenting Iran’s court minister Teymourtache on a diplomatic visit to London. Upon completing the edit, the company produced special copies of the two films with the addition of Farsi titles. These were delivered to the Shah and marked the first production in which the oil company directed its film use to an audience within Iran, albeit limited to the head of state.41

Meanwhile, the Tudeh Communist Party was building power in Khuzestan, capitalizing upon the anti-British sentiment growing among oil workers. The number of Iranians employed by the oil company had ballooned from 1,884 workers in 1911 to 27,180 workers by 1930.42 The majority were migrants from the impoverished rural area of southern Iran. At social gatherings organized by the party, Shafiee writes, workers voiced grievances against the oil company, including “the miserable conditions faced by the oil workers, the discrimination between Iranian and foreign workers, the poor living conditions and low wages.”43 As Iranian oil workers increasingly established their collective identity and interests, they organized another strike to demand improved living and working conditions, this time in unprecedented numbers. On May 1 in 1929, roughly nine thousand workers led by Yusuf Ifikhari and other trade union organizers halted work at the Abadan refinery.44 The workers demanded recognition of their union, a 15 percent pay increase, reduction of work hours, and equal conditions for Iranian and Indian workers.45 Stephanie Cronin has noted that the wives of strikers also played a significant role, particularly in agitation. For example, Banu Zahra Khanum Muhammad Sadiq made a speech denouncing the oil company and criticizing the police as traitors.46

The labor strike produced some favorable results for the workers. The APOC began to address worker demands for better conditions, including increasing housing, which accommodated more Iranian employees and their families while also instituting further strategies for segregating and surveilling workers.47 Ultimately, however, the combined efforts of the British oil company and Shah Reza Pahlavi’s increasingly authoritarian regime effectively suppressed the uprising and obstructed further union activity, and government ministries collaborated with the company to stifle the strike, imposing martial law and at the same time increasing wages in order to pacify workers.48 Over subsequent years, the company maintained insecure working conditions, inadequate housing, and insufficient services for the local labor force on which it depended.

Nonetheless, the continuous uprisings of workers exposed the oil company’s vulnerabilities and impressed upon the APOC the necessity of strengthening its relations with the regime to keep worker organizing at bay. So as part of its ongoing diplomatic and public relations efforts, the company decided to make another film, an effort that would, however, be blocked by the Shah. According to Naficy, the oil company set out to make the new film in part to “replace” In the Land of the Shah because “scenes of the oil plant were out of date, and its ‘local color’ was ‘susceptible to criticism as being no longer representative of Iran.’”49 The reference to local color likely pertains to the opening scenes of the Bakhtiari goat herders crossing the river and the bazaar in particular, which did not conform to the modern image of the country that Reza Shah Pahlavi wished to project to international audiences. Yet for seven years, until 1936, the regime’s concern over the cinematic portrayal of Iran as “backward” led the state to oppose the oil company’s proposals for a subsequent film. Mixed reactions and some level of critique of foreign filmmakers’ fascination with the Bakhtiari migration were also expressed among Iranian audiences. During one APOC-operated cinema screening, in 1931, of the British Council’s version of the American documentary Grass (1928)—which similarly depicts the river migration—made with Farsi commentary, the writer Ali Javaherkalam later recalled that a number of oil workers and other guests in the audience grew agitated and walked out of the cinema, audibly voicing their objections to what they perceived as a negative depiction of their country.50

While the oil company was unable to produce a new film, it continued its film use by acquiring films produced by affiliate companies. In the 1930s, the oil company purchased a four-reel film recording documenting the construction of the Trans-Iranian Railway from the Ulhan Company in 1930. The APOC recut the film to a two-reel documentary titled “Trans-Persia Railway, 1930,” and also acquired and recut a four-reel sound film produced by Compagnie Française des Pétroles documenting the construction of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) pipeline into a one-reel silent film with English Intertitles.51 These acquisitions demonstrate some continuity in the company’s film use, linking national infrastructural projects like the railway and transnational infrastructure outside of Iran to its broader narrative of oil modernization.

In 1928 the Iranian prime minister, Abbas Mehdi Hedayat, called for a revision to the original oil concession. National newspapers echoed concerns that the unfair royalty terms were, in Shafiee’s words, “perpetrated by ignorant government officials of the former Qajar regime, who had been bribed to do so by foreign financiers.” The position in favor of renegotiating received popular support from public opinion. In negotiations with the oil company, the Iranian government demanded greater oil production to raise its royalties, a percentage of profits from APOC’s numerous subsidiary companies, and an increase in the proportion of Iranians employed in high-level positions within the company.52

At the same time, APOC officials were determined to limit production levels in Iran relative to world supply to protect their profits.53 When the British government had become the majority stakeholder in APOC in 1914, rescuing it from collapse, the company also held a majority share in the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), a cartel established to effectively prevent the overproduction of oil in the Middle East to protect European and Asian markets. On July 1, 1928, APOC’s chairman John Cadman, along with TPC’s other shareholders Anglo-Dutch Shell Oil Company, Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP), and a consortium of American companies, participated in the secret “Red Line Agreement,” orchestrated by the Armenian businessman and TPC shareholder Calouste Gulbenkian in Ostend, Belgium.54 The agreement stipulated no further development in oil operations between the Suez Canal and Iran (excluding Kuwait) and thus put APOC’s interests further at odds with the governments in Iran and Iraq. Headquartered within APOC premises, TPC was renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1929. The mutual interest of the two companies was directly overseen by Cadman, who was appointed managing director of the IPC in 1929. According to Shafiee, “As chairman of APOC with a share in the IPC, Cadman needed to coordinate his view of both APOC and IPC’s control over production as a single entity unrelated to human-made political borders.”55

The Iranian government continued to push the APOC for improved worker treatment, increased oil production rates, higher royalties, and technical knowledge of its operations. These demands were framed in terms of national sovereignty and clashed with the secret agreements of the Red Line Agreement.56 On November 28, 1932, Reza Shah canceled the 1901 D’Arcy Concession, and the decision was quickly endorsed by the Iranian parliament (Majlis). The action was a threat to APOC’s existence. Further, it threatened to undermine the British state, whose military security had been tied to control of Iranian oil since 1914. Petroleum royalties, which made up a substantial share of government revenue, plummeted. The following year, Cadman and Reza Shah entered direct negotiations and settled on a revised agreement that reduced the concession area by three-quarters and guaranteed Iran’s government a fixed royalty protected against price fluctuations. Additionally, the company claimed it would accelerate the “Persianization” of the skilled labor force.57 Iranian oil workers expressed support for the cancellation of the concession and were particularly in favor of the revised agreement where it addressed the issue of training Iranian workers to move up in rank.58 By the time the APOC made its next film in 1936, the project would be centered on a nationalistic portrayal of Iran that centered the Shah and his modernization policies. By then the milieu of industrial film sponsorship had grown significantly as the oil company’s main competitor embraced an inventive approach to film use and Film Centre, an organization dedicated to industrial sponsorship, came onto the scene.

“INVENTING A NEED”

While the APOC’s oil concession in Iran was under revision, major developments were underway in the headquarters of a rival oil company, Anglo-Dutch Shell. In 1933, John Grierson articulated an expansive vision for the potential of corporate film sponsorship in a special report to Mr. Walter Hill—Shell’s head of publicity and aviation—that laid out a scheme of film use to serve the company’s interests.59 Central to this proposal was the establishment of a core film production unit that would serve all areas of the company and distribute films to the public through educational and cultural organizations.60 The unit would create six kinds of films, including films for nonindustry audiences that “dramatiz[e] dominant themes in the oil industry; sales-promotion films; popular science films; technical films for specialized audiences; staff department information films; and a Shell newsreel.”61

Shell had made its foray into film use during the early 1920s to document its operations in the Dutch East Indies colonies (present-day Indonesia). Bataafsche Petroleum Film (1924) was a three-hour silent documentary, which according to the film historian Rudmer Canjels, “besides showing the colonies, the exotic nature, and promoting the company as an important player on the world market . . . also had a clear educational function, displaying the production of crude oil, oil products, and the uses to which they were put.” It premiered near The Hague for government representatives, diplomats, businesspeople, and the press. A Dutch newspaper review lauded Shell for teaching the audience “that the petroleum industry is not a money-making concern for shareholders; [ . . . ] but she, wherever she comes, creates a prosperous colony, spreading her benevolent influence far and wide. Without a doubt many eyes will be opened, and it is good that the Royal Dutch called in the aid of the honest film to present herself, as she has nothing to hide.”62 Thereafter the film circulated among film societies and elite circles, with footage recut for subsequent versions and shorter films.

Up to this point, film use by industrial companies had primarily served functions of internal record-keeping, worker training, and direct advertising. But almost immediately following Grierson’s report, Shell invested in radical transformation of its approach to industrial film in line with his vision of sponsorship, establishing an in-house film unit that became an integral feature of the company’s operations. Shell’s approach was especially significant in two regards: first, it assumed a general audience for its productions, rather than an industry-specific one; and second, it internationalized the production and distribution of industrial filmmaking. In short, the idea was that Shell would make films for everyone to enjoy in all the areas it operated. This aligned with its broader approach to advertising not only products but also the reputation of the Shell brand. As John Hewitt writes, analyzing the oil company’s print advertisements and billboards in the same decade, “You bought Shell petrol not for what it did but because of what the company stood for, for its concern with the wholesome aspects of civilized life, nature and art.”63

Indeed, Shell’s films rarely focused on the subject of oil and were deliberately not used as a vehicle for product advertising. Instead, they associated the Shell brand with the prestige and promise of modern science and technology, as well as the art of cinema. Its documentaries featured subjects made possible by its petrol and petroleum-based products—such as aviation, motor racing, firefighting, disease control, and robotics engineering—and circulated primarily through nontheatrical distribution to cultural and educational institutions. Typically running between ten and twenty minutes, Shell’s 35mm documentaries employed techniques of animation and visual effects intended to make any technical processes more legible to general audiences.64 The Shell Film Unit’s first documentary, Airport (1935), depicted a “typical day” in London’s Croydon Airport, one of the world’s busiest travel hubs. It circulated in London cinemas and was billed as “compelling entertainment” for the masses.65 Following its debut as a film sponsor in public cinemas, the film unit continued to produce an ambitious program of documentaries intended for mass appeal.

While other corporate sponsors tended to insist on product and brand placement within the films they financed, Shell intentionally instituted a blanket “no-plugging” policy that prohibited the company name from appearing in the motion picture or soundtrack, apart from the film credits. Arthur Elton, Shell’s chief film advisor, referred to this guiding principle as the “First Law of Industrial Sponsorship.” He promoted it in the journal Film User:

Neither the name of the company nor the name of a product is ever mentioned in picture or sound-track within the body of the film. This detachment has served Shell companies well for, today, Shell films are a part of the curriculum of schools all over the world. They have been adopted by scores of universities and are used by international, national and government institutions everywhere. They have publicised Shell Petroleum’s reputation as a great international commercial company, but one with a lively sense of international responsibility and a leader in the fields of science and technology. Such is the broad public relations purpose of the Shell Film Unit.66

In 1938 Grierson established Film Centre in London, an ostensibly independent organization that assumed ARFP’s role as the intermediary between companies and filmmakers.67 However, Film Centre originated with Shell’s desires. According to the film historian Steven Foxon, “Shell was very keen to avoid entirely in-house productions that would appear as ordinary pieces of Shell’s public relations. So, a curious arrangement came into being; while Shell had its film unit under its own roof, the planning of the films and the supervision of them was done from outside by Film Centre.”68 With Elton at the helm, Film Centre assumed the role of producing Shell’s films. This arrangement created an illusion of detachment between the oil company and the film productions, which was thought to make the films farther-reaching in their appeal.69 This illusion disguised the reality of how entangled the two entities remained: they shared personnel, and producers as well as freelancing filmmakers shifted positions seamlessly between them. At one point in 1951, the Shell Film Unit was even housed in the Film Centre offices on 133 Oxford Street. Film Centre did have other clients, including the Gas Council, Imperial Airways, and, particularly during wartime, the British government. Following the war, in 1946, Film Centre added the British Overseas Airways Corporation as a major corporate film sponsor that with Shell sustained its operations going forward.70 But for most of its existence until the 1970s, the bulk of Film Centre’s work involved the Shell Film Unit.

As the popularity of Shell’s documentaries became apparent, the Petroleum Film Bureau was created in London for nontheatrical distribution of oil-sponsored films to grade schools, colleges, film societies, and special-interest clubs helping Shell’s films to reach as many as eight million viewers by the middle of the century.71 Film trade magazines such as Film User and Sight and Sound catalogued oil company films as “factual” and “educational” documentaries, regularly recommending them as classroom teaching aids. To reach audiences in potential markets in other countries, Shell documentaries were translated from English into over twenty different languages for distribution to classrooms, film libraries, film festivals, and commercial theaters worldwide.72

The global scale of Shell’s film distribution was central to its purposes and was followed by its investment in the proliferation of film units in oil-producing countries where Shell operated.73 During the 1950s, Shell established and oversaw the training of film units in Venezuela, Australia, Nigeria, Egypt, and India.74 The units produced short documentaries for instructional use as well as public relations, demonstrating the role of oil and its associated industries on the social and economic development of the producing countries.75 Through its film use, Shell actively promoted the company’s role as a cultural agent, claiming to make a valuable contribution to film culture within its producing countries.76 Shell arguably had an unparalleled major impact on the global context of industrial film sponsorship from the 1930s onward. In some key respects, Shell’s film use was a foil to the approach undertaken by the AIOC.77 While Shell approached filmmaking with a relatively free agenda that permitted a range of subject matter and creative control, in Iran, the oil company’s only avenue for attainting government permission to make another film in the 1930s required pandering to the sovereign and focusing the content on the nationalistic achievements of his regime.

FILMS FIT FOR THE SHAH

By the 1930s the tenor of Reza Shah Pahlavi’s rule in Iran had become autocratic, having pushed back against the British oil company to negotiate new terms for their agreement and implemented sweeping modernization policies and national reforms. Signaling his desire for recognition on a global stage, in 1935, the leader stipulated that his diplomatic counterparts in Western countries were to refer to the country as Iran in official correspondences, rather than Persia.78 This decree signaled the Shah’s insistence on producing a controlled image of the modern nation-state that conveyed an abrupt divorce from the past. Later that same year, the British oil company followed suit and changed its name from the Anglo- Persian Oil Company to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The AIOC had been seeking government permission to make a new film for seven years to replace what it considered the outdated footage of In the Land of the Shah, and in 1936 the government agreed. The stipulation was that the film would need to comply with censorship protocols that required portraying Iran as a modern nation.

Arthur Elton (on behalf of Film Centre) was on board with the project from the outset as producer of the AIOC’s new film project. He hired John Taylor from the Associated Realist Film Producers (ARFP) to fly to Iran and simultaneously direct two documentary films with distinct purposes.79 The first was a silent film, originally titled Oilfields of Iran and later retitled Oil from Iran. The second would be the oil company’s first sound film, originally titled Dawn of Iran and later retitled Dawn in the East: The Story of Modern Iran. Intended for theatrical distribution in Britain, the film’s concept of the “dawn” of a new day was tailored to the Shah’s desire to establish an image of modern Iran breaking away from its traditional past, which Elton must have understood was necessary to maintain good relations with the regime. The oil company describes Dawn of Iran as “depicting the progress of Iran under the Shah, and the part played by the AIOC in this progress,” explicitly linking oil extraction to the regime’s infrastructural, economic, and social development schemes and accomplishments.80

While Dawn of Iran appealed to the regime for international public relations purposes, Oilfields of Iran fulfilled the more pragmatic needs within the company for an updated and thorough survey of its oil infrastructure that would be circulated nontheatrically to internal and industry audiences. Taylor filmed both documentaries on location in Iran between November 1936 and March 1937.81 In an interview with the historian Garth Pedler, Taylor recounted that his film unit consisted of “two large Chevrolets, their two drivers, an interpreter, a police captain, two Model ‘A’ Newman’s, a gyro tripod, a Leica and myself.”82 The government restricted what Taylor could and could not film and specified the subjects that were off-limits in a list that included camel caravans and carpet making. This was because, Taylor noted in a separate interview with the film historian Hamid Naficy, “it was considered that they would make Iran look primitive.”83 To supervise Taylor’s adherence to the rules, the police captain was assigned as government censor to accompany him during the filming. According to Taylor, the censor “had to look through the viewfinder and censor every shot on the spot.”84

Taylor described his assignment filming in Iran as an adventure he considered to be “pure heaven.” The weather conditions were extreme and at one point they were snowed into a location. He recounted, “For weeks we slept in our clothes—hats, coats, shoes and all—but the local foods were tasty: kebabs, pilafs and caviar. Once on the move again, we went everywhere and saw everything: Persepolis, the mosques at Esfahan, the oilfields and refinery, the Caspian Sea, and the constructing of the Trans-Iranian railway, one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times. Indeed, as one of the sections of the railway was complete, I filmed the Shah putting in the ‘golden bolt.’”85

Dawn of Iran’s focus on modern Iran in terms of its infrastructural development could have been seen by the regime as a kind of corrective to the American documentary Grass (1925)—the ethnographic film about the annual migration of the Bakhtiari people in western Persia that had gained tremendous international attention. More than likely, from the Shah’s perspective, Grass was seen to undermine his unilateral desire for the projection of a modern Iran.86 In actuality, the film crew that set out to make Dawn of Iran had to rely on the very same migratory routes through Iran’s hills and waterways and used the same goatskin rafts and mule caravans that were depicted in Grass in order to reach their filming locations. As Taylor described it, “To reach the geologists who were exploring for oil we had to ferry the wide and rushing Karun on inflated goatskins, and to ride mules up and down mountains for days on end. Inland from Rasht on the Caspian, we tramped 10 miles across a plain through deep snow to a derelict mosque.”87 However, the on-screen version of modern Iran composed for Dawn of Iran excludes any representation of how the company’s extractive infrastructure built upon traditional nomadic technologies to enable its access for oil infrastructures and produce images of them.

Dawn of Iran was originally planned as a thirty-to-forty-minute documentary, but was ultimately condensed to fifteen minutes. This adhered to the new single-story format of the popular cine-magazine The March of Time, which screened approximately twenty-minute news stories in advance of featured films. While Dawn of Iran was never featured as part of The March of Time, the format would have allowed for wide theatrical distribution in the United Kingdom, the United States, Latin America, and Australia, indicating the company’s ambitions for a more far-reaching distribution of the film in other countries.88 Instead, it was screened in theaters around Britain as filler before or after the run of feature films.89

FIGURE 10. Archaeological remains of Persepolis, in Dawn of Iran, 1938. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

The documentary focused on depictions of Iran’s ancient past in juxtaposition to its modern infrastructure, to convey the nation-building under the Shah as developments that continued the greatness of past civilizations while breaking away from what it distinguished as outdated traditions. A review of Dawn of Iran published in London’s World Film News gives a clear sense of the film narrative’s construction and hints at the film’s reception in Britain:

The discovery of oil and the appearance on the scene of Reza Khan made Iran possible. The former brought wealth to the country and Reza Khan knew how to control that wealth for his people’s good. [ . . . ] Roads are built in a couple of shots—deserts reclaimed in a sequence; crops improved with a cut; and agriculture mechanized in a dissolve. Progress appears almost too easy. The film Iran is built in a day. Towering behind this renaissance are the shining and fantastic shapes of oil wells; pumping their liquid power through mile after mile of pipeline to the refineries of Abadan. Bringing back from the West money for the Treasury, money to educate a nation and build a new country.90

The voiceover, read by a male British narrator, provides a heavy-handed delivery of the film’s central theme of Iran’s modernization under the Shah. Enlivened with a musical score and in situ sound recordings of crowds of spectators, flowing water, and whirring machinery, Dawn of Iran delivers a formulaic story arc of Iran’s modernization in three acts: an overview of Iran’s past as an ancient and traditional nomadic history depicted as archaeological sites and herdsmen; sequences of large-scale infrastructure projects, industrial activities (including oil), and military displays; and views of Tehran as a modern cityscape coupled with scenes of young Iranian women and children in educational settings, from the play yard to nursing school. In Dawn of Iran, national progress was portrayed for cinema audiences in terms of top-down state-led industrialization (depicted through images of the built environment) and modernization (depicted through images of women pursuing education and work) by the oil industry.

FIGURE 11. Iranian construction workers, in Dawn of Iran, 1938. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 12. Iranian women medical students, in Dawn of Iran, 1938. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

Attending to a different yet related audience and purpose, Oilfields of Iran was distributed nontheatrically to industry audiences in 35mm, 16mm, and 9.5mm from 1937. At one point the company planned to use additional footage that had not been included in the films in “a geographical film of Iran, which would have included more of the works of national and historic interest”; however, this project fell apart in December 1938 because the company did not consider the cost of producing diagrams and maps for the film to be a justifiable expense. In partnership with Film Centre, the oil company also established a film unit based in London that traveled to Iran in March 1938 to shoot a twelve-reel sound film directed by James Davidson and photographed by Clifford Hornby. The full-length film, AIOC Technical Film 1938, “was too long for general screening, but it dealt separately with exploration, exploitation, pipelines and refining in Iran, so each section lent itself independently for use in illustrating technical lectures to company personnel.”91 The company issued an abridged version to be housed at the National Film Archive as Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Presents a Survey of Its Operations in Southwest Iran in 1938.

The films may have stroked the Shah’s ego, but the relationship between the company and the Iranian government remained tense. In 1938, Reza Shah wrote to Cadman to complain about the decline in export-driven royalties and came close to canceling the concession a second time. However, Cadman convinced him to maintain the concession.92 In the years that followed, during the Second World War, Britain’s involvement in Iran was driven by military strategy. Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran with the strategic aim to protect its oil assets and maintain supply lines to Allied forces. Concerned that Reza Shah would not cooperate, Britain forced him to abdicate in 1941. The same year, leadership of Iran transitioned to his son and successor, Mohammed Reza Shah.

ANGLO-IRANIAN’S FIRST “REAL” OIL FILM

Since 1929, oil workers in Iran had organized to demand dramatic improvements to benefits in health, housing, and education. The company failed to adequately meet these calls for change, and workers supported the Iranian government’s efforts to negotiate with the oil company, going so far as to cancel the concession. The government priorities in these negotiations included increasing state royalties, guaranteeing rates of oil production, and “Persianization” of the workforce.93 At the same time, oil workers persevered in placing pressure on the oil company from below, culminating in a major three-day strike in 1946 that began in the Abadan Oil Refinery and within hours spread to include as many as seventy thousand Iranian and Indian oil industry workers throughout Khuzestan, at that point becoming the largest labor strike in Iranian history. Worker demands for better pay, housing, and working conditions and an end to systemic discrimination by management were partially addressed by a labor law, which at the same time established new government regulation of labor unions. Ultimately, the government repressed union activity by declaring martial law, after which clashes erupted, making it one of the most violent labor protests in Middle East labor history.94

Despite the atmosphere of discontent, the oil company pressed on in the following years with a proposal to make another film, as an attempt to assuage stakeholders and consumers with the perception that conditions in Iran remained stable and were progressing accordingly. In 1949, AIOC officials proposed to undertake a novel documentary project that would produce what they described as the company’s first “real” film, that in other words would avoid the sort of “straight oil well to petrol tank story” epitomized by a film like In the Land of the Shah.95 Following a visit to the refinery in Abadan, the AIOC’s public relations officer Ronald Tritton developed the idea for a film that could reach the public in cinemas in England and Iran. Declaring it to be one of the most important publicity projects the company had ever undertaken, Tritton and other company officials reveled in the notion that the documentary would make history as “the first genuine effort to portray Iran sympathetically to the outside world in a film.”96 In one memo, Tritton declared that this was to be an “intelligent and entertaining film” that would make its audience “feel proud of and warmly disposed towards a great British enterprise.”97 The film was an ambitious project that aspired to entertain audiences with spectacles of industrial technology and exotic landscapes, and simultaneously to portray to stockholders and general audiences at home that the AIOC was a benevolent harbinger of modernity in Iran.

For almost two years, between March 1949 and January 1951, AIOC officials in London bounced around ideas for a documentary film centered on daily life in Abadan. Off the bat, Tritton conceived of the film as a lively portrait of the refinery and adjacent company town. In his proposal for a “film about Abadan,” Tritton explained that his objective was to create a film that reflected what he saw as the “real” atmosphere of the place:

The film might start at midnight in the Refinery itself something full of noise and steam and heat to set the scene. This noisy production sequence could give way to the quiet of a hospital ward in the early hours with an English nurse soothing an ill and frightened Iranian girl. From there we might go, say at 5am to the dairy farm and the comfortable homely noise of milking cows. Do you see what I am getting at? Through the day, sequence can fade into sequence [. . .] The whole thing would have the Refinery as its backcloth and the rhythmical pumping of oil as its musical theme—the real heartbeat of Abadan.98

This sort of well-crafted movie about Iran, he asserted, would succeed in fulfilling several of the AIOC’s key public relations objectives. Ambitiously, Tritton saw this film as having the potential “to reach the public in cinemas and to describe Abadan to the widest possible audience, thus indirectly placing the A.I.O.C. before them.” What is more, he believed it would “show the Iranians what is being done in the way of amenities, housing, health services and so on, yet do it incidentally without underlining or making a special point of it, which is suspect.” He imagined the film’s potential to develop notions of ownership and community, “[giving] both the British and Iranian inhabitants of Abadan a sense of pride in their huge organisation and a feeling of being recognised by the outside world,” and “[enabling] those of the Company’s employees who have not been to Abadan to realise how their colleagues live and work, thereby adding to the cohesive ‘family’ spirit.”

Beyond internal use, Tritton intended this film to “have considerable prestige value for our Associated Companies, thereby helping sales,” and “be widely used non-theatrically by PFB [the Petroleum Film Bureau] after its commercial release.” Finally, he noted, “it should be possible for the British Information Services to use it overseas as the story of a great British enterprise.”99 In his correspondence with AIOC executives about the film project, Tritton emphasized that the company had great odds of reaching the public with this sort of short documentary, as it was expected to receive wide circulation in cinemas. In turn, A. H. T. Chisholm, who was overseeing the project from the AIOC’s London headquarters, advocated for the film project’s merits in a correspondence with the Iranian Embassy, writing:

The object of the film is quite definitely not to advertise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company or to display it in anything but its correct place and proportion in the modern Persian scene. The object of the film is to make, I think for the first time, a first-class film of Persia available for public and private showing, which there is every reason to expect will attract wide public interest and attention.100

Evidently, the objective of making a film with appeal to general audiences was a top priority for the company when undertaking on-location film productions. Tritton’s colleagues initially went so far as to suggest that the film might include “sex, drama or other moronic-appeal” to ramp up public interest.101

During the early stages of planning, AIOC officials briefly entertained the possibility of featuring an Iranian perspective through the film.102 But this consideration was short-lived, and ultimately it was merely the title, Persian Story, that disingenuously gestured toward a native perspective. The film production did nothing to incorporate the point of view of AIOC workers and locals and, as would be expected, crafted a story of the country that focused on the AIOC’s contributions to the infrastructure and quality of life in Khuzestan from the top-down perspective of the company.103

Persian Story was scheduled to commence production on location in the spring of 1951, amid a situation in which discontent over labor conditions among oil workers was intensifying into a major wave of strikes in the fields and Abadan, culminating in a worker-led movement for nationalization.104 Worker demands, which varied from place to place, included wage increases, free accommodation, and annual leave. In late March 1951, twelve thousand workers went on strike and twenty thousand workers and supporters (including women and children) reportedly marched in Abadan. Military forces fired into the group, and some protesters were killed. At one point, the landmark cinema house in Abadan became the site of a major clash between Iranian security forces and protesters.

FIGURE 13. Demonstrators wave the Iranian flag and surround the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company headquarters in Abadan, June 1951. Published in James H. Bamberg, A History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 2, The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 426. Reproduced from the bp archive.

Nevertheless, the AIOC pushed forward with production plans to make Persian Story. The company ultimately hired Ralph Keene of Greenpark Productions in London to direct the film. Arriving in Khuzestan in April, Keene’s crew encountered obstacles that made it practically impossible to follow the intended shooting script and schedule. Obstacles ranged from troubles with equipment and transportation to issues of government censorship. Work stoppages and picketing continued, culminating in the Abadan refinery being effectively shut down by April 15, cutting oil production in half.105 When the strikes shut down the refinery, the film production was also cut short. Keene reported to Tritton from the fields in southern Iran about the decision to terminate filmmaking and evacuate:

As the political situation was again rapidly deteriorating, and all Company officials were asking and advising us to clear out as quickly as possible, I reckoned our job was done and said ‘Finis.’ And now we can’t get back to Abadan, because of the disturbances there—oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!! Last time we weren’t allowed to stay in Fields, and now we aren’t allowed to leave—whatever can happen to us next? The rest of the Unit, with the equipment, will be returning to England as soon as they can get away.106

At the end of the month Mohammed Reza Shah appointed Mohammed Mossadegh as prime minister in the Majlis (Iranian parliament). Days later, on May 1, Mossadegh moved swiftly to declare the Nine-Point Oil Nationalization Law. By June the AIOC’s office was occupied by Iranian officials.107 These actions brought an abrupt end to forty years of Britain’s monopolistic control of Iran’s oil, and the last of the AIOC’s British employees were evacuated in October 1951.108

Newsreels in Britain decried the “Persian Oil Crisis” and demonized Mossadegh as an enemy to the “West.” This message was amplified by the final cut of narration in Persian Story, which the AIOC finished with the footage it had been able to shoot. It concludes with a response to nationalization in Iran that attempts to cement the British legacy in Iran and paints nationalization as a story of deprivation to the world:

Even unfulfilled, even empty, Abadan stands for an enduring need. All the arguments and uncertainties and heartbreaks must not obscure this—that in this place generations of British people have devoted their lives—perhaps unconsciously—to bring benefit to millions they would never see, and never know. For without oil the world as we know it could not exist.109

Persian Story was featured as part of the oil industry’s largest film show to date—one that Tritton described as the biggest film party of any sort ever presented in Europe—hosted by the AIOC. Thousands of petroleum industry insiders dressed to the nines on the wintry morning of December 10, 1952, gathering in central London.110 They packed into seats for the AIOC’s film show, screened simultaneously in multiple London cinemas, featuring five films—including Persian Story, a few other documentaries, and an animated short—all intended to showcase the AIOC’s global reach and artistic endeavors.

Despite the atmosphere of glitz and glamour surrounding the multiscreen event, the oil company was in fact exhibiting its films amid tremendous loss and precarity for its stakeholders. In the past, the AIOC had used film to try to counteract challenging political situations, occluding the overwhelming dissatisfaction among Iranians with working conditions, the British monopoly over oil extraction, and the Pahlavi regime. But by the time the AIOC screened the final cut of Persian Story, Britain had no presence in the Iranian oil industry to hold onto. The film was made only in English and was exhibited primarily to audiences in Britain and Europe, where it garnered attention as a picture of the AIOC’s operations in Iran before nationalization. The film circulated theatrically and nontheatrically, receiving extremely positive reviews, and was selected by the Venice, Locarno, and Edinburgh film festivals in 1952.111

In the context of Britain’s oil crisis, Persian Story served to project a strong image of the company during a period of great instability and distress. Together the film’s voiceover narration, carefully constructed montages of infrastructure and daily life, and a dynamic soundtrack paint a cheerful picture of life in Abadan and paint the AIOC as a harbinger of modernity in Iran. That modernity is visually constructed in terms of legible spatial arrangements and by the depiction of the liberation of Iranian women. For example, slow panning shots fixate the frame, in a sequence of wide and medium shots, onto the gardens of a large bungalow house and a lush landscape of palm trees where two Iranian women stroll through the scene, pushing prams and wearing recognizably European-style dresses and hairstyles. In another sequence, a nurse walks outside to care for her patient, and the viewer is confronted with the startling juxtaposition of the intimacy of the scene against the backdrop of the refinery. Whether or not oil infrastructure is pictured in the frame, the comforts of the company town are constantly attributed to the pipeline and refinery that are the subject of the first half of the film. The narration is not subtle in the least, stating,

Abadan means more than oil; it means people—men and women, Persians and Europeans, to whom Abadan is not just industry, but home. So side by side with the giant refinery grow all the other amenities of a modern city where the races meet—schools and colleges, hospitals and clubs and clinics; and as the two peoples share the work, so do they share the leisure. In the heart of the oil city stands the reason for it all, the enormous purpose of all the rest: the great refinery, the biggest in the world.

FIGURE 14. Audiences in the Leicester Square Cinema, the Metropole, and the Odeon Cinema, Marble Arch, London, for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company film show, December 1952, in The Petroleum Times, January 1953.

With these harmonious images, the film seems to have attempted to paper over workers’ degrading conditions and their political actions, but ultimately, what happened offscreen was more powerful than what happened on it.112

The story of film use by the AIOC between 1921 and 1951 points to early corporate interest in filmmaking and circulation as a means to shape public perceptions of the company in Britain and recast tenuous political circumstances in favorable terms. The oil company used film as a medium to transform the narrative of British colonial extraction of oil from Iran in the aftermath of World War I into a story of national enterprise. However, oil nationalization cut off the oil company’s control over what was then the largest operating refinery in Abadan, destabilized British hegemony across the country, and compromised Britain’s military and economic dominance. But Britain’s neocolonial reach and systematic planning had given it other options.113 As a shareholder in the multinational consortium organized by Gulbenkian in the Red Line Agreement of 1928, the AIOC was able to open production in other concession areas where it had been restricting supply to maintain its own dominance, notably in Iraq.

FIGURE 15. Iranian women push strollers through a manicured garden in Abadan, in Persian Story, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

For decades, the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC, formerly TPC) had intentionally restricted production in Iraq to manipulate global supply and pricing in favor of its shareholders.114 By the spring of 1952, however, the IPC was nearing the final stages of construction for a thirty-inch pipeline in Iraq and Syria that would conveniently serve to address Britain’s demand for oil in the wake of nationalization in Iran. Yet tensions between the company and oil workers were also running high in Iraq. IPC workers had been mobilizing against the company from the late 1940s, and nationalization was already a part of public discourse in Iraq. The oil company wanted to use film to shape public opinion within Iraq, rather than focusing—as had the AIOC—primarily on public perceptions in Britain.

That older approach reflected the fact that the British government was majority shareholder in the AIOC: the company needed support within Britain for its industrial operations in Iran. As labor movements in Iran posed threats to British oil operations, the oil company adapted its film use approach reactively, hoping to appease the Shah and maintain its ability to operate in the oil-rich state with impunity. In spring 1951, according to film historian Malcolm Cook, Tritton and AIOC officials had begun discussing the concept for an animated film with the specific intention to reach Iranian audiences and attempt to set the record straight that the company had not “stolen” from Iran but rather “invested” in the country’s development. However, by autumn, “there was a clear recognition that the ‘original purpose . . . to point out to Persians the error of their ways’ was no longer viable and that the film was instead to have more universal applicability in areas like the Caribbean and Venezuela.”115 Moreover, the AIOC’s cinematic experiments failed to address the perspective of Iranian viewers, particularly in Khuzestan, and ultimately, the power of these workers helped push the company out of the country altogether, albeit temporarily.116

Still, film use continued to be regarded as a fundamental aspect of oil company public relations, and as the IPC contemplated the risks of worker unrest in Iraq, it turned to Shell’s leading film expert, Arthur Elton, for help. As head of Film Centre in London, Elton had developed Shell’s approach to film use, which by the 1950s included investment in the establishment and training of local production units within oil-producing countries. Elton marshaled the knowledge and success of Shell’s endeavors to develop a film program in Iraq that would take heed of the lessons from the AIOC’s experiments in film use. The thinking was that the IPC’s films should be made to be seen by audiences inside Iraq, including its workers. As a result, IPC’s film production in Iraq largely stepped away from the model of hiring British production companies and instead moved toward the establishment of a full-time film unit in Baghdad, which included British and Iraqi filmmakers.

2

The Cinematic Pipeline

Oil Infrastructure and the Prestige Documentary in Iraq

Early in 1952, a small crew of filmmakers began chasing the construction of the world’s largest oil pipeline across northern Iraq to the Syrian coast. The black-and-white footage and sound they captured for the Iraq Petroleum Company’s first prestige documentary were cut together with a voiceover narration and released later that year, with theatrical screenings both in English and in Arabic, as The Third River. The film effectively put the oil pipeline on the map and the screen for Iraqi audiences, and in a profile of the company, published the following year in Film User, the British industrial film journal, the IPC was clear about its reasons why:

While the company has at present no need for sales-films it has now begun to use film for a more serious purpose—to prevent Persian happenings repeating themselves in neighbouring Iraq, by showing the public there that the activities of an oil company benefit not only the shareholders but the country which owns the oil.1

The IPC began building its thirty-inch diameter, 555-mile pipeline in November 1951, after the “Persian happenings” of oil nationalization made the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)—a controlling stakeholder in the IPC—lose its dominant position in Khuzestan. After decades of suppressing oil production in Iraq to control the global price of crude, the IPC pivoted to dramatically increasing oil production in Kirkuk in that moment to guarantee critical oil supply for the British government. But tensions ran high between the oil company and its workers. Labor strikes and popular uprisings in Iraq during the previous decade had targeted the IPC as the chief institution of imperialism in the country.

The IPC hoped film could help sway public perception in Iraq, and it took heed of the AIOC’s limited public relations strategy in Iran. The AIOC had used film to address internal company audiences, educate general audiences in Britain, and appease the Shah, yet it had never made films intended to persuade Iranian audiences. Under the guidance of Arthur Elton at Film Centre in London, who by then had ample experience producing films for the AIOC and Shell, the IPC made a prestige documentary that attended deliberately to Arab audiences in Iraq. The Third River was the first documentary about Iraq to be widely distributed in Arabic, and, according to the film’s director, Michael Clarke, “the Arabic version was very important because the film was designed to reconcile the oil company to the population, much more than to describe its operations to the English-speaking audiences in Europe.”2 In other words, Iraqis inside the country were the primary intended audience for the pipeline film.

In February 1952, during the film’s production, Iraq’s parliament approved a profit-sharing agreement that Prime Minister Nuri al-Said negotiated with the IPC. The fifty-fifty agreement was protested by political parties who favored a path to nationalizing Iraq’s oil.3 Iraq’s government earmarked 70 percent of the state’s incoming oil revenue from IPC production to national and urban infrastructure projects managed by the Iraq Development Board. The making of the film ushered in the IPC’s public relations strategy in Iraq, one that attempted to overwrite the narrative of the oil company as an imperialist institution and recast its image as part of Iraq’s program of national development. The Third River was a celebration of national infrastructure and social development projects underway and in the works. As the IPC’s chief film officer John Shearman put it, the purpose of the pipeline documentary was to “explain to the people of Iraq what the oil company was doing in their territory, [that] it was not really taking away the black gold because it was putting money back into national development.”4

The tense political atmosphere in which the IPC contracted Film Centre in London to make the prestige documentary would lay the groundwork for the oil company’s film use in Iraq going forward. Cinema was a significant medium for the IPC’s message because it had the potential to facilitate a spatial understanding of Iraq as a legible geography of oil extraction and a presumed canvas for industrial-scale modernization. The Third River heralded a significant change in oil company film sponsorship in the region, emphasizing the contributions and viewership of citizens in the producing country. In the aftermath of oil nationalization and the collapse of British hegemony in Iran, Film Centre prioritized making Arabic-language films and shone a spotlight on Iraqi filmmakers that would lay the foundation of the IPC’s film use strategy for years to come.

UPRISINGS

Headquartered in London, the IPC was a multinational corporation with five shareholders—the AIOC, Shell, Compagnie Française des Pétroles, the Near East Development Corporation (a consortium of American companies including Standard Oil and Gulf Oil), and Calouste Gulbenkian, the Armenian businessman who famously brokered the 1928 shareholding arrangement and secret Red Line Agreement. The company’s primary objective was to control production of oil extracted from Iraq’s northern fields in Kirkuk and sent, via its pipeline, to the Mediterranean. The IPC maintained the undeveloped capacity of Iraq’s oil reserves in order to use Iraq as a “swing producer” that balanced global oil demand by increasing production only as necessary, to guarantee that the British and American oil cartel was maximizing its profits.5 When workers demonstrated against the conditions imposed by the company and citizens protested the treaty protecting unhindered British influence over the economy, the Hashemite regime deployed troops to open fire on demonstrators to enable and protect IPC’s position inside the country.

The Iraqi Communist Party described the oil industry in a party directive as “the mother-monopoly of imperialism in Iraq,” as historian Hanna Batatu recounts, and thus a necessary “mother-base” for organizing workers.6 By the 1940s, worker grievances were significant and included low wages, severe working conditions, lack of housing, and insufficient access to transportation and food.7 The party focused on labor mobilization at two critical points along the IPC’s existing pipeline infrastructure: the Kirkuk oil fields and the K3 pumping station, where the twelve-inch Kirkuk-Haifa and Kirkuk-Tripoli pipelines diverged. As at other oil company settlements throughout the region—in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain—the everyday spaces of residence, transportation, and commerce at Kirkuk and K3 were racially segregated, enforcing the hierarchy of high-ranking British employees over subordinate Iraqi workers.8 Two young workers, twenty-three-year-old Hanna Ilyas of Baghdad and twenty-year-old Hikmat Faris ar-Rabai’i of Mandali, organized their fellow oil workers in a campaign to demand a labor union, which the IPC flatly denied in June 1946.9 Ilyas later convened approximately five hundred oil workers around a local coffeeshop where they agreed upon a set of demands to deliver to the company. The IPC rejected all points on this list too, which included recognition of their right to a union, increased minimum day-wages, no more arbitrary worker dismissals, and provision of pensions and insurance for illness, disability and old age. In July, most oil workers in the Kirkuk fields (nearly three thousand) went on strike and marched through the streets carrying banners to call attention to their unmet demands. The IPC and British officials inside Iraq were caught unaware by the oil workers’ strike, which was not surprising, historian Arbella Bet-Shlimon clarifies, considering that “the strike occurred after decades of government indifference and British obliviousness to Kirkuk’s urban affairs.”10

The central government in Baghdad instructed local authorities to repress the uprising by any means necessary,11 and the police acted with brute force: they opened fire on the strikers while they gathered in a public garden south of the oil camp, killing between ten and eighteen workers while wounding far more. Four days later the IPC finally agreed to raise the basic wage, and the strike ended. This “savage and totally unprovoked” attack unleashed on the peaceful strikers had “a far-reaching effect throughout the country, and proved to the population at large,” according to Su’ad Khairi’s recollections, “that the government was perfectly prepared to kill Iraqi workers in defense of British economic interests,” sacrificing its own citizens for an imperialist institution.12 Returning to work in the aftermath of the violence, writes Batatu, Iraq’s oil workers “were never again the same.”13

Eighteen months later, widespread anger over the Hashemite government’s ongoing complicity in maintaining Britain’s stranglehold over economic and political domains in Iraq erupted in a national uprising known as al-Wathba (“the leap”). Iraqis were already upset about the skyrocketing cost of living when, in January 1948, they learned of the Portsmouth Agreement: Prime Minister Said Jabr had promised that the Iraqi government would uphold the humiliating and despised 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty, which permitted ongoing British military occupation of Iraq and, in Batatu’s language, “virtually reduced Iraq into an appendage of the British Empire.”14 College students backed by the Communist Party mobilized ongoing mass demonstrations referred to as al-Wathba in the streets of Iraq’s capital. The protests continued over a period of weeks in which dense crowds of students, workers, men, and women from across the city flooded the main arteries of Baghdad. The government deployed police and the military to the demonstrations with commands allowing for unrestrained violence. On January 20, police fired on a mass demonstration in Baghdad that included railway workers and impoverished migrant residents marching together. Nuri al-Said, the former prime minister who continued to be the regime’s political puppet master, ordered further escalation of lethal force against protesters. The uprising culminated in the massacre of an estimated four hundred civilians in the streets of Baghdad on January 27.15

Demonstrations against British institutions such as the IPC continued into the following months. A labor strike that halted operations at the IPC’s K3 pumping station in April 1948 has been described by historians Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett as “one of the most memorable events in Iraqi labor history.”16 After the company failed to concede to substantial wage claims put forward by a workers’ committee, more than three thousand oil workers and administrative staff stopped work in a collective action that left the pumping station (a critical juncture on the petroleum pipeline) at a virtual standstill for two and a half weeks. The company reacted mercilessly, withholding workers’ access to food, water, and electricity. In a gesture of solidarity and humanity, residents in neighboring towns provided the K3 strikers with meals.17 Days later, on May 12, the Iraqi Communist Party organized a march on the capital, carrying a large banner that read: “We the Oil Workers Have Come to Claim our Violated Rights.”18 On their journey, villagers continued to lend support, offering food, shelter, and transportation when needed. Police arrested the marching workers seventy kilometers outside of Baghdad, near Falluja, effectively ending the action.19 Despite its failure to increase wages and improve labor conditions in K3, al-Masirah al-Kubra (“the great march”), writes Batatu, “left an indelible mark upon the imagination of many workers.”20

In May 1948, as the Nakba in Palestine erupted into a regional war, the Iraqi government declared martial law and eventually deployed eighteen thousand troops to defend Palestine against Israel’s assault.21 Labor mobilizations in Iraq diminished during the war, but not because public opinion towards the oil company had improved. The IPC had shown itself to be merciless and exploitative, and it was clear that the company could call upon the police state to brutally repress dissent among its workers and defend its lucrative position in Iraq against the country’s citizens. But in the coming years, the IPC invested in a film campaign celebrating national development that it hoped would reshape public imagination, sponsoring films and eventually establishing a film unit in Baghdad.

The campaign was seeking not just to counter feelings of unrest, but also to advance a positive vision of what a new profit-sharing agreement could do for the country. Two critical events precipitated that campaign. First, in 1950, the landmark deal between Saudi Arabia and the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) established a new precedent for fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreements between foreign oil companies and producing states in the Middle East. Second, months later, in the spring of 1951, Iran terminated its concession with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and nationalized its oil industry. The revolution in Iranian oil politics, coupled with Aramco’s unprecedented agreement in Saudi Arabia, put the Iraqi government in a strong position to pressure the IPC for a dramatic renegotiation of its existing financial arrangement. The outcome was a fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement in Iraq and the establishment of the Iraq Development Board to oversee the allocation of 70 percent of national oil revenue into national infrastructure and urban development projects. Oil-financed projects ranged from the modernization of industrial infrastructure to the commissioning of new housing projects and architectural landmarks across Baghdad, including original designs by modernist architects including Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier.22 The Development Board became the center of the story the IPC sought to tell about its own role in the country. In both print media and films intended for Iraqi audiences, the company promoted oil as a force of modernization. Workers and citizens may have been discontented on the ground, but on the pages and screens shaped by the IPC, they were the beneficiaries of development.

MAKING THE THIRD RIVER

In 1951, the IPC established a public relations office in its London headquarters and—hoping to boost its reputation in producing countries—turned to Arthur Elton for help developing its film program. Elton was already a leading figure in the efforts of British oil companies to use film to their advantage in the Middle East, guiding them not to advertise themselves, but to develop reputations as cultural sponsors.23 He had emerged as an influential director and producer with Associated Realist Film Producers, which was organized by John Grierson—recognized as the founder of the British Documentary Movement—in order to “liase between documentary filmmakers and potential sponsors,” according to film historian Steven Foxon.24 As discussed in chapter 1, Elton had produced two prestige films for Anglo-Iranian during the 1930s, Dawn of Iran and Oil from Iran, and was a film officer for Shell. Next, Elton took on leadership of the London-based Film Centre, an organization of filmmakers that Grierson established in 1939 to oversee the management of personnel on Shell films and distance the administration of film labor from the internal administration of the oil company.25 All this meant that Elton had worked with two of the IPC’s major shareholders already, and was well-positioned to initiate the IPC’s role as a film sponsor. John Shearman, founding director of the IPC film unit, recounted that Elton “had invented a need for films to be made for oil companies in the Middle East,” and in Iraq “persuaded the petroleum company as it was then, and it was a very powerful oil company indeed at that time, that they needed films to be made.”26

The IPC’s film strategy and public relations campaign in Iraq unfolded alongside Shell’s deliberate and increasing efforts to control the oil narrative in countries where the threat of political unrest could target the company and compromise its massive networks of extractive infrastructure in those places. In 1947, a few years before Film Centre partnered with the IPC to make The Third River, Shell had initiated a novel effort to make films in Venezuela to reach general audiences in Venezuela. Shell assigned its in-house film producer Edgar Anstey to develop a plan for six separate films, and the following year a crew from London arrived to start filming for two Spanish-language documentaries—Horizontes Nacionales (New Horizons) and Las Bases del Progreso (Harvest for Tomorrow).27 As in Iran, however, Shell’s film production in Venezuela was completed amid political upheaval, when a coup d’état in 1948 overthrew President Rómulo Gallegos and eventually instated the military dictatorship under General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.28 As a result, the film releases were delayed until 1950. According to film historian Rudmer Canjels, the films “were designed to show the population the impact and development of oil on the Venezuelan economy, while at the same time stimulating the government to start gradually investing the proceeds of the oil in social services and industrial development.”29 On the heels of Shell’s film releases in Venezuela, Film Centre took the reins at IPC to make an Arabic-language documentary that prioritized reaching Iraqi audiences.

During this period, Elton was producing and editing the Shell documentary Stanlow Story (1952), about the construction of an oil refinery in northwest England. His experience on the film and its success likely played a part in informing the idea for a documentary about the construction of the IPC’s new thirty-inch pipeline, running from the Kirkuk oil fields to the oil terminal in Banias, Syria.30 By January 1952, Film Centre had developed a master shooting script for this first sponsored IPC film project, “Pipeline to the Sea,” written in London by Stuart Legg. Legg had just finished writing commentary for Stanlow Story, and his script for “Pipeline to the Sea” followed the same general narrative structure: the commentary first offers a descriptive overview of the plan for construction, using the visual aid of an extensive diagram in which visual elements build up sequentially within a static frame. That sets the stage for a sequence of montages depicting successive phases of construction.

Stanlow Story generally emphasizes the technical expertise required for the enormous scale of the refinery construction, cutting between diagram shots and footage of engineers and contractors meeting to discuss the plan. “Pipeline to the Sea” uses the diagram shots too, but ties the transformation of nature through the pipeline project to the transformation of society in Iraq. Specifically, it links oil extraction to the identity of the nation-state and the promise of oil to modernize Iraq and uplift its people. In the “Pipeline” script, the first “diagram shot” calls for a zoom-in to an area of the map that frames Iraq as a site of extraction relative to the oil’s destination: “4. Diagram Shot. A map of the Fertile Crescent, closing into the east-west strip running from Kirkuk to the Mediterranean.”31 The script goes on to emphasize the dynamism of “the flow of oil” that undergirds modernization and development in Iraq: “With the completion of this new pipeline, the flow of Iraqi oil to the seaboard, to the consuming countries, is greatly enlarged. Iraq now takes her place as one of the major oil-producing nations of the world.”32

To execute Legg’s script, Elton assembled a production crew with specific expertise in documentaries about high-impact infrastructural development projects that they could bring to what was planned to be one month of filming on location in Iraq and Syria. He selected Michael Clarke to direct. In Clarke’s words, “I was thought to be quite adventurous and to me it was a great adventure.”33 Clarke had experience as a director for British Transport Films making documentaries about the impacts of infrastructural developments on British society, such as new railway and bus lines. What’s more, he had been stationed in Palestine a decade earlier during his military service, and thus had a slight familiarity with the Arabic language that gave him a perceived edge over his contemporaries for this project. Elton recruited two additional British film crew members to join Clarke: Peter Kelly was cameraman, and Kelvin Pike was assistant cameraman. Both were young men who had worked with Elton as part of the crew filming Stanlow Story. The merits of their experience on the refinery film outweighed any hesitation over their lack of international experience. Kelly recalled, “Arthur asked me if I would like to go to Iraq. I had never heard of Iraq, I was very young at the time. And I said, ‘I’d love to go!’ That was certainly my first reaction.”34

Elton hired an Iraqi as the fourth and final crew member. Kerim Mejid, a cameraman with experience working in Egypt at Studio Misr, anchored the production team, and his contribution marked a distinct departure from the norms of industrial filmmaking that had defined Anglo-Iranian’s film sponsorship in Iran and relied exclusively on foreign production crews. Clarke described Mejid’s role among the crew as a vital interlocutor, “to help us, not only technically, but with his knowledge of language and customs.”35 The inclusion of an Iraqi cameraman on the film crew was a detail the company made certain to publicize. Mejid’s involvement was an important precedent for the future of IPC-sponsored film production in Iraq. Although he was hired as an experienced professional cameraman and not considered a trainee, the film’s mixed British and Iraqi crew was a model for Film Centre’s vision of the IPC film unit. An article that Clarke authored about the making of the film also names the two Vanguard drivers, Francis Toma and Abdulla Ahmed, who accompanied the crew and provided local guidance to the foreign crew members in navigating Iraq’s roads as well as its social norms.36

FIGURES 16 and 17. Peter Kelly and Kelvin Pike (left) and Kerim Mejid (right) filming pipeline construction for The Third River, 1952, in Iraq Petroleum, December 1952, 17. Reproduced from the bp archive.

Cinematically speaking, Clarke described the filming of pipeline construction in the desert as technically challenging and personally rewarding. In his words, “In making ‘The Third River’ we were faced with Iraq as it is, not with the luscious and cloying luxuries of a Hollywood gorgeous east.” While popular contemporary fictions like Thief of Baghdad had been shot on fantastical studio sets in London or California, the IPC’s new infrastructure was built and filmed in what Clarke describes as “the open and almost empty desert.”37 Filming began in Kirkuk; from there the crew moved between the sites of future pumping stations along the course of the pipeline.38 Kelly described their work: “We followed the construction of the pipeline over a great distance. We didn’t shoot it all, you know, day after day after day because we didn’t want to duplicate the scenes we’d done on the Tuesday, say. But as we moved along the pipeline and the territory changed and the kind of things they had to do to bury the line or the welding and all that kind of stuff. That dictated what we were shooting and the idea was to show what was involved in doing this job, in building this pipeline—which, at the time, I think it was the biggest that had been built.”39

The challenges of shooting the black-and-white documentary were conceptual as well as technical. Clarke recalls his initial skepticism in realizing Legg’s shooting script, which “stressed the dynamic and dramatic aspect of the pipeline construction” for the screen. Dreaming up the film from London, Legg had provided directives that did not necessarily translate to the realities Clarke and his crew encountered once on location. They experienced various technical obstacles in grappling with the “hazy atmosphere” and high exposure of lighting conditions in desert landscapes where they had no prior experience filming. Further, as Clarke describes, “the general flatness of the desire and river rain landscape was always a difficulty, in that the number of available natural elements for pictorial composition seemed low.” Filming ended up lasting about four months, prolonged at times due to camera breakdowns, defective film stock, desert dust storms, and bureaucratic permit delays.40

The film crew moved as a self-contained unit of six men, “two cameras, 15,000 feet of film, a tape recorder and batteries, type-writer, office equipment and personal luggage for four months.” Clarke recalls, “We must have spent half our time moving back and forth across the mainland of the Middle East.”41 The cars they used for the bulk of the journey were newly purchased by the company, according to Kelly, who recounted, “[When] we eventually ended up in Lebanon, our driver bought a twenty-gallon jug of olive oil, and of course the bottle broke and the back of the car for the rest of the trip was sticky and horrible.”42 Kelly’s account indicates the close quarters the six kept among each other, and the personal opportunities the trip presented for the individual men: the driver likely purchased the large quantity of olive oil as a delicious souvenir, uncertain of whether he would have the opportunity to travel the distance between Iran and Lebanon again soon.

From start to finish of the production, the film crew relied on the IPC’s extensive transportation and communication networks, which included a travel agency system and telephone and telegraph systems.43 All this helped the company facilitate the success of the film production, as Clarke made clear: “Whenever a setback occurred at one location, we were able to move over to another, even though several hundred miles distant. Therefore, although our original plan of covering the pipeline construction first and then moving on to the background sequences was frustrated for technical reasons, both engineering and cinematic, we were always able to go somewhere else and cross off some more scenes in the working script.”44

Although the film technically followed the story of the construction of the thirty-inch pipeline, the vision of Legg’s original script was farther reaching. Legg’s script emphasized “the flow of oil” that undergirded Iraq’s modernization, and this conceptualization influenced the filmmakers to the end. In Clarke’s words, “We wanted to say, however briefly, however synoptically, that the subject of our film was, fundamentally, Iraq itself. Our theme was indeed twinfold: in the foreground, the drama and achievement of building the pipeline, the pumphouses, the terminal; and beyond all this, the development and improvement of the human lot which the Iraq Government, through the Development Board, would have the means to achieve.”45 The Development Board had come into being midway through filming, when, in February 1952, the IPC signed the fifty-fifty profit- sharing agreement with the Iraqi government. The working film title, “Pipeline to the Sea,” was dropped. During postproduction in London, Clarke drafted multiple versions of the film commentary in which the idea for The Third River as the centralizing theme and film title was finalized.

After the film was edited in London by Clarke and Ralph Sheldon, Clarke’s commentary, written and recorded in English, required translation for the Arabic version of the film that Film Centre and the IPC would distribute in Iraq and Syria, where the pipeline operated.46 Clarke consulted the head of IPC Public Relations, Frank Stoakes, for recommendations about whom they might hire for the Arabic translation. He suggested Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, a young Palestinian poet and professor at the College of Arts in Baghdad, whom Clarke happened to have known from his military service in Jerusalem in 1944.47 Clarke traveled to Baghdad to look for Jabra at the Sindbad Hotel, where he was rumored to spend time. There Clarke met a waiter who walked him over to Jabra’s apartment. Then and there, Clarke hired Jabra for the translation of The Third River.

Two versions of Jabra’s translation of the commentary for the same cut of The Third River were recorded for audiences in Iraq and Syria, read by Sayed Ziad Fahim of the IPC’s Baghdad Office and Professor Rifa’ai of the University of Damascus, respectively.48 In December 1952, The Third River premiered in Baghdad, and over the next several months was shown widely in all of Iraq’s major cinema houses ahead of the featured films, reaching a much wider local audience than the AIOC, with its English-language films In the Land of the Shah (1928), Dawn of Iran (1938), and The Persian Story (1952), ever attempted to find. Clarke mentions that the approach to film distribution in Iraq’s public cinemas signified a new purpose for the prestige film that distinguished it from most industrially sponsored films made for Western audiences. In Clarke’s mind, the film did not just have a new purpose among industrially sponsored films; it also had an impact within Iraq, in that “it was said that people were not aware of their country,” and that Kurds in the North and Arabs in the South did not feel a sense of national unity.49 As we will see in chapter 4, the decision to make IPC films in Arabic created significant limitations when they were screened for ethnically diverse (mostly Kurdish-speaking) audiences in and around Kirkuk.50 Indeed, the director’s ambitious assumptions about Iraqi audiences reflected the IPC’s gross overestimation of the potential for its films to reach the national population and create a unified vision of modern Iraq and the oil company’s place in it.

CINEMATIC CARTOGRAPHY OF A PIPELINE

Through its film use, the IPC sought to transform how Iraqis viewed their country, as it described in an evocative 1957 account of the IPC’s filmmaking in Ahl Al Naft, the company’s Arabic-language magazine: “The cinematographer descends in a deep, dark tunnel, or ascends a high, unstable rock, or soars in a small airplane at a low altitude over flooded waters or Tharthar channel—and so that he can record scenery which no one has the luck to see except a few from the engineers, so he can bring it to resting viewers in their chairs. So, the cinematographer prepares for the millions of participatory viewers, the events and construction that change the view of Iraq now.”51 The IPC’s first film attempted to “change the view” of Iraq by introducing its latest pipeline as the country’s “third river,” a life-giving artery akin to the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

In The Third River, the oil company assumes its “right to look” at Iraq from the air, and from that top-down vantage establishes a visual regime shaped by self-evident corporate power.52 The film makes abundant use of the aerial perspective, afforded by access to IPC aircraft, which produces a cinematic cartography of Iraq that surveys and maps the flow of oil between Kirkuk and the Mediterranean through the physical network of the IPC’s wells, pipelines, pumping stations, tanks, and tankers that deliver industrial quantities of crude from below the earth’s surface to refineries and consumers in Britain.53 The Third River includes aerial and ground shots from all these vantages in the oil network as well as animated maps that—coupled with tightly scripted commentary—interpret the IPC’s imposition of infrastructure on the Iraqis below.54 The commentary, voiced by a British male narrator, frames that development as the harbinger of modernity and prosperity, hitching the country’s future to the free flow of oil. This cartographic approach to cinema presents Iraq as an impressive landscape already shaped by extraction and instructs Iraqi viewers to recognize modernity in the architectures of oil—from the pipelines, pump stations, and ports to the petro-financed urban infrastructure of buildings, boulevards, and bridges in Iraqi cities.

The film opens with a cartographic view of Mesopotamia: the land between two rivers. First, the title and preamble appear against the background of a historical map of “Asia Minor and Arabia.” The map orients the viewer within a premodern Middle East region before the establishment of mandate and nation-state boundaries following the First World War. It also emphasizes natural topographical features including mountain ranges and waterways throughout North Africa, Anatolia, and the Arabian Peninsula. The music intensifies and the camera zooms into the space between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The narrator’s opening line gestures to cartography as a marker of not only space but time: “Long before maps were made, successive empires left in Syria and Mesopotamia the monuments of their splendor.”55 This is followed by a montage of wide panoramas and low-angle shots of ruins. The Ctesiphon arch and Babylon Ishtar gate are depicted but not identified or discussed with any specificity. Rather, they stand in as monuments that allude to an ancient past and construct a visual cartography of grandeur and ruin in modern Iraq. The narrator locates them within the “torrid landscape” of the desert, which occupies a time before maps and a space before nation-states. The montage concludes with a reference to Islam and accompanying footage of minarets: “And Islam itself bridging history, after thirteen centuries still proclaiming its single deity.” The mention of “deity” punctuates the commentary, followed by a musical flourish and jump cut from the minaret to a low-angle view of a towering oil derrick and the line: “Iraq of the twentieth century begins to acquire the trappings of modernity.” The visual juxtaposition of the minaret and derrick works as a dramatic bridge to introduce oil infrastructure within the premodern mapping of Iraq, and thereafter the montage brings views of Iraq’s oil modernity to the fore: “The internal combustion engine, the powerlines, and the concrete buildings, the factories, and the efficient products of their industry.”

FIGURE 18. Opening title card from The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

The sequence pivots from a showcase of infrastructure to a montage of water, flowing from hillside streams to rushing currents that feed the Tigris River into Baghdad. The commentary names the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as the source of ancient Iraq’s agricultural prosperity, which sets up the introduction of the IPC pipeline as Iraq’s third river and source of future wealth:

But as the twin rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, carry the water past the historic cities and into the parched lands of the South, once so rich and fertile, every drop is needed to hearten the dusty soil afresh. And to bring it once again to the land, new methods begin to displace the old. Iraq is advancing, but every step needs wealth. And unexpected wealth is there, matching in its flow the power of her two great rivers: oil. Laid down in bygone geological ages, and now extracted with all the resources of twentieth-century man. A river of wealth: a third river.

FIGURE 19. Remains of Tāq Kisrā, a Sassanian-era monument southeast of Baghdad, in The Third River, 1952. In the film, the name, origins, and location of the structure are not given. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 20. Minaret of thirteenth-century Zumurrud Khatun Mosque and Mausoleum in Baghdad, in The Third River, 1952. In the film, the name, origins, and location of the structure are not given. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 21. Iraq Petroleum Company oil derrick, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 22. View of Baghdad from the Tigris River, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

Through the commentary and visual elements, the film continues to draw parallels between water and oil, as well as the river and the pipeline.

Visually, this happens via what Sebastien Caquard has termed a “cinemap,” or map “in motion developed specifically in cinema for narrative purposes.”56 Cinemaps appear throughout the film and produce an image of a “river” of oil that flows uninterrupted from its source in Kirkuk to the terminals on the Mediterranean Sea. This is a prime example of what film historian Malcolm Cook refers to as “the cartographic imagination of animation at the service of petroleum extraction.”57 The cinemap is featured prominently in the first half of the film, beginning as an otherwise empty map of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine/Israel—a blank gray space, shaped by thin borderlines, and punctuated only by the geographical contours of the Tigris and Euphrates. As the film sequence progresses, highly simplified diagrams of oil extraction are projected onto the image of the map, tracing the pathway of oil from the Kirkuk “fields” through the pipeline toward the destination ports where tankers take the crude off to Europe. The visual abstraction of the cinemap has the effect of isolating the diagram of oil infrastructure from any social, cultural, or ecological contexts.

Voiceover commentary heightens that disconnect, narrating observable changes on the map without any sense of what happened in real places on the ground. The map and narration present pipeline development as a forward march in progress and represent the places where it exists only in terms of their potential to deliver oil to the world. The narrator makes reference to the fact that Kirkuk—indicated on the map as a black dot—sits atop “one of the greatest oil deposits the world yet knows,” whose magnitude is told by way of numbers: “68 million tons already.” Two decades worth of labor, infrastructure, and ecological upheaval are depicted on the cinemap with the appearance of two icons representing oil derricks above the Kirkuk dot. The narrator then introduces a problem: Iraq’s oil—“oil that the world needs”—is isolated from those who demand it in Europe. The solution follows, logically: transdesert pipelines were required to move the oil from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean. Parallel thin white lines (representing the original twelve-inch pipelines) appear on the map beginning at the Kirkuk dot and extending towards the Euphrates River before they diverge toward two separate unnamed dots on the Mediterranean shoreline. A set of bolder white lines (representing sixteen-inch pipes) are traced by the same invisible hand parallel to the path of the pipelines already in place. Here, the task of the oil story is made plain: move as much oil as possible, however possible. The question of how it was achieved, or who controls the oil, remains unaddressed. The implication of the film’s cartographic lesson is that the invisible hand that draws the map also controls the flow of oil.

FIGURE 23. Cinemap showing twelve- and sixteen-inch IPC oil pipelines and infrastructure between Kirkuk, Iraq, and Tripoli, Lebanon, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

The flow of oil was interrupted, however, in the summer of 1948 following the Zionist occupation of the Haifa refinery. The Iraq government ordered the IPC to shut down pumping to the Haifa terminal in order to prevent Iraqi crude refined there from being used to supply Zionist forces in the war against Palestine.58 The film glosses over the details of this event. The narrator attributes the closure to “the state of war between Israel and the Arab states,” and the cinemap indicates the disruption as a fading away of the lower white line. Eliding any further discussion, the physical, social, and economic traces of infrastructure that existed and connected Iraq and Palestine, not to mention the lives devastated and lost in that war, are swiftly swept aside with the dissolve. In the world of the cinemap, obstacles to oil production are minimized and easily overcome by the redrawing of a white line through gray space to connect the oil derricks to a new black dot, representing the construction of a new pipeline and terminal.

Pumping stations are another key feature on the map, positioned at key intervals along the length of the pipeline to monitor and manipulate pressure and thus enable continuous flow of oil. Each pumping station, approximately seventy miles apart, included a settlement, a community, a labor force, and a node of power with the potential to enable or cease the flow of oil. On the cinemap, they are represented by symbols resembling a simplified housing barrack. As the pumping stations appear, the line changes from white to black, indicating the movement of oil through the pipeline from Kirkuk to Tripoli, Lebanon. As the black line reaches the Tripoli dot, an icon representing an oil tanker instantaneously appears and swiftly departs from the coastline into the Mediterranean Sea, carrying Iraqi crude “away to the refineries of Western Europe.” The map fades away and the history lesson concludes on this point. The cinemap crafts a neat and simplified cartography of Iraqi oil, practically divorced from political, social, and ecological contexts.

The map crossfades to a live-action aerial view of the desert pipeline. The transition uses the composition and framing of the dark line set against the gray empty desert landscape to reinforce the impression that the map is the territory. The aerial image of the pipeline effectively works as visible evidence of the authority of the cartographic image as a representation of place. The voiceover reinforces this, calling attention to the camera’s aerial position and its role in mapping the unseen flow of oil:

Only from the air is the route of the pipelines easily visible. From the ground, a slight hump of soil, hardly discernible, marks the line that connects the lonely pumping stations. Each of them is an unexpected industrial oasis in the heart of the desert. Where palm and eucalyptus trees stand amongst storage tanks, manifolds and pump houses. Here, the unseen oil acquires fresh impetus. Here, are the skilled men who watch over it and the intricate machines whose scrutiny is endless. From one station to another the news goes out of pressure, temperature and flow. And in every station, isolated as a ship at sea, the daily log is written up. On and on the oil continues in its hidden course from station to station, always watched, always thrust on. Over the desert of Iraq, into the desert of Syria, on the long climb over the gravel waste towards the gap in the Syrian hills. Where road and pipeline run down to the road at Tripoli with its storage tanks and waiting ships.

The commentary repeatedly reminds us that oil flowing in the pipeline is essentially unseen. The movement of oil is made possible by the men and machines stationed along the pipeline. The visual montage that accompanies this commentary maps the “hidden” flow of oil, constructing a visible system of extraction with cuts between panning aerial views of the pipeline and wide and medium shots of derricks, pipes, dials, and tanks captured on the ground. In aerial view, the montage alternates between images of the lone pipeline slicing the frame of otherwise “empty” desert and distant views of pumping station settlements. Here, aerial views cross-fade to close-up shots of the active monitoring of oil temperature and pressure inside pumping stations by unnamed men who are typically captured from behind and over the shoulder to reveal a wall or switchboard of pressure gauges and dials. The montage constructs the journey of oil across space and time from Kirkuk to the sea, which reinforces the black line traced across the empty background. The montage reinforces the authority of the cinemap as visible evidence of Iraq’s geography of extraction.

FIGURE 24. Aerial view of the thirty-inch IPC oil pipeline in a remote landscape, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

The type of aerial photography on view here had been developed by the British military earlier in the century, in order to create maps of North Africa and the Middle East, surveil inhabitants below, and garner advantages in desert combat.59 Military surveyors considered Iraq’s desert terrain the “perfect laboratory” for the use of strip-mapping and other novel cartographic methods blending data from oblique and vertical images. In the aftermath of war, the “ideal laboratory” of Iraqi airspace invited new applications of aerial photogrammetry for archaeological surveys and petroleum exploitation.60 Private companies formed to promote the commercialization of aerial photography for data gathering and identified the oil industry as the “greatest potential market” for the technology. These companies ultimately depended on investments from major petroleum companies to succeed. By 1940, aerial photography had become “indispensable” to the oil industry for purposes of cadastral surveys and mapping. During Hashemite rule, British interests maintained easy access to Iraqi airspace: the British Royal Air Force maintained bases in Iraq and the IPC operated regular private flights for employee business and leisure between Kirkuk, Baghdad, Basra, and regional cities and, at times, for its film project.61 The oil company’s access to airspace also shaped the story of oil it constructed in its films—both via the shots such access made possible and via the way this top-down view shaped audiences’ understandings. The Third River was the oil company’s first film and cinematic cartography of modern Iraq, a film as map made for popular consumption.62

FIGURE 25. Iraqi worker checking pressure measurements in an IPC pumping station, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

The montage of aerial and on-the-ground views concludes and cross-fades into a return to the cinemap. The narrator sets forth a new problem: how to increase the output of oil from Kirkuk. Another white line, bolder than the others, represents the most recent thirty-inch line, constructed in 1950. The line is traced in parallel to the path of the existing lines until it diverges just north of the Lebanese border with Syria towards a new sea terminal at Banias. Pump stations are multiplied to indicate increased capacity for maintaining the flow of the increased volume of oil. Next the map zooms out to reveal the logistics of materials transportation for the pipeline construction to various destinations. The white line is retraced in black, signifying the completion of pipeline construction as the narrator explains the plan for its actual construction, beginning at Banias and eventually converging near the Tigris River with a second construction team moving westward from Kirkuk.

The cinemap sequence diagrams the logistical undertaking the IPC proposed to increase the output of oil extracted from Kirkuk. It simultaneously establishes a geographic imaginary in which to make sense of the montage of pipeline construction that follows: receiving, trucking, unpacking, welding, inspecting, digging, drilling, laying pipe, fitting, cleaning, coating, wrapping, and shoveling. According to Clarke, the Film Unit was able to document these scenes “with the aid of Government officials in many departments.” He continued: “These scenes, of technical institutions, building, irrigation, measures of hygiene, are more than symbolic,” making greater economic prosperity and better quality of life possible in Iraq.63 Throughout this sequence, close-ups on the faces of Arabs working in various capacities punctuate medium and wide shots depicting the machinery and manpower necessary to construct the pipeline. These consistently reinforce the theme of the pipeline as a national development project, built by local hands. The process depicted culminates in the final weld and the crowd gathered to witness the initiation of the flow of what it deems “one of the world’s greatest” oil pipelines, the IPC’s thirty-inch line from Kirkuk to Banais: “the Third River.”

FIGURE 26. Cinemap showing transportation logistics for construction of the thirty-inch IPC oil pipeline, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

The concept of the third river aspires to transform the banal imagery of industrial infrastructure into the drama of oil modernization. The documentary inscribes Iraq as a geography of extraction within which the massive earthworks take place shaped by the movement and meeting of men, metal, and machines along a desert passage to presage the movement of petroleum. The film concludes with a series of montages intended to construct a vision of Iraq’s future that is necessarily built upon the story of extraction. The film’s narrator explains, “This was the purpose of it all, that the oil of Kirkuk should go out to the world. In 1952, Iraq began to give more of her wealth to the world. What in return could her people expect?” Young boys and farmers representing the people of Iraq are paired with sweeping shots of new dams and bridges being constructed to bring order to Iraq’s rivers. The Development Board would ensure, according to the narrator, that “the money would be there for more dams, and regulators to control the flood waters so abundant in spring, and liberate them to the farmers whose soil, unhelped by rain, were thirsty for them. There would be money too to extend communications, to build more bridges and roads to open up Iraq and make travel easier.” The film claims that oil will continue to modernize Iraq’s economy and society with the proliferation of training for “doctors, engineers, technicians. To revolutionize agriculture and make the land more productive. To introduce new strains of livestock increasing the yield of milk and meat. To carry on the struggle against disease in city and village. And to replace primitive houses by new, more solid buildings.” In this vision, oil carries the promise of a benevolent vision of modernity.64 And yet, the discontent, unrest, and violent state repression that fueled uprisings in Iraq during this same period never register within the oil company’s tidy vision of modernity scripted for the screen.

FIGURE 27. Iraqi worker driving a crane during oil pipeline construction, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

FIGURE 28. Iraqi workers guiding placement of thirty-inch pipeline, in The Third River, 1952. Reproduced from the bp Video Library.

A BLUEPRINT FOR OIL COMPANY PUBLIC RELATIONS

The IPC used film to try to reinvent perceptions of the oil industry in Iraq. Worker-led uprisings in 1946 and 1948 signaled widespread discontent with the oil company, and nationalistic parties decried the IPC as an imperialist institution, with the Iraqi government acting as its accomplice. After all, state-sanctioned violence against Iraqi workers had been actively deployed to protect British interests in Iraq on multiple occasions. Treaties enabling Britain’s military occupation of Iraq beyond the formal dissolution of its colonial mandate allowed the IPC to operate at its will and against the interests of its Iraqi employees. Elton and Film Centre proposed that a new public relations strategy could lead Iraqis to see the IPC not as a force of exploitative plunder, but as a cultural sponsor and modernizing force that benefited their country.

The IPC publicized its production of The Third River to draw attention to the connections created between the film project and local Iraqi community and culture. Michael Clarke’s article about the making of The Third River, published in the widely circulated Iraq Petroleum magazine, documents how film industry workers from inside and outside Iraq came together to make the IPC’s first sponsored film. The article’s composition does more to enshrine the filmmaking story than to encourage readers to watch the film. Photographs of the Iraqi men who worked to support the film are placed prominently alongside the text. In the first spread of the article, before the reader’s eyes land on the title and byline, they meet with a picture of Kerim Mejid, identified as the “Iraqi Cameraman.” In the opposite corner, a candid photo captures the unassuming expressions of “the Iraqi drivers” Francis Toma and Abdulla Ahmed while in conversation with an unnamed companion. By centering these details, the article celebrates the contributions of individual Iraqis to the production of the first internationally distributed documentary about modern Iraq.

Notably, The Third River was also the first industrially sponsored film to be made in colloquial Arabic versions for audiences in Iraq and Syria. Beyond the distribution and promotion of its sponsored films, the IPC’s effort to make stories about its filmmaking visible to Iraq Petroleum’s tens of thousands of readers was a hallmark of the company’s approach to film use.65 In short, the company made it known that film sponsorship not only projected on-screen representations of modern Iraq, but also cultivated new opportunities for Iraqis as film industry workers behind the scenes. This distinguished the IPC’s film use, which was fostering direct engagement with Iraqis, from the extractive approach epitomized by Anglo-Iranian’s film sponsorship in the preceding decades, in which British production companies would come into Iran for short and limited durations in order to shoot footage for a script written and edited in London, intended primarily for English-speaking audiences in Britain, Europe, and the producing country. In fact, as the next chapter examines, the making of The Third River set a foundation for a permanent IPC film unit in Baghdad, where the film’s British cinematographer Peter Kelly would remain working alongside Iraqi colleagues.

Iraqi workers were used as the face of IPC film sponsorship. This served to change the oil story from one of colonial extraction and state violence to a narrative about national progress. This benefited the company and the regime, drawing attention away from the company’s recent history of worker mobilizations in protest of its labor policies and the violent and brutal actions of state and company authorities. The new narrative also went hand in hand with news of the fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement and establishment of the Iraq Development Board. Arthur Elton spelled out the motivation behind the strategy to make films in an oil-producing country, for and with the involvement of citizens of that country, writing that:

If this is done imaginatively and from the point of view of the people . . . themselves (and not from that of the film technicians introduced from overseas), the effect will be gradually to create a favourable attitude towards the oil industry as a whole, and to make the Operating Companies [sic] seem a more natural and useful part of the economy . . . than many people are at present prepared to allow. Irrational, emotional attitudes will be damped down and criticism directed into informed and constructive channels.66

Elton describes a blueprint for oil company film use in a neocolonial context, proposing film as a means for influencing public perception among oil workers and general audiences in oil-producing countries.

The IPC’s films were the first documentaries about Iraq made in colloquial Arabic and seen widely in Iraq. The emphasis on Arabic language was a hallmark of the IPC’s approach to filmmaking and mirrored other aspects of the company’s broad public relations strategy. The company produced and circulated original films as well as periodicals in Arabic and English that explained the company’s operations in Iraq to internal company employees as well as the public. This included magazines, illustrated reports, company calendars, and annual diaries, which were produced in English and Arabic versions and circulated throughout Britain and the Middle East. In its inaugural issue the editor in chief of Iraq Petroleum explained, “Between them the two publications represent an important step in the forward march of the Iraq Petroleum Company and its Associates, and it is confidently hoped that it is a step that will lead to a closer integration of the interests of all our people everywhere, from Banias to the Persian Gulf, from Baba Gurgur to the crush and bustle of Oxford Street.”67

The magazines’ editors set out this vision for unifying the imagined community of the multinational corporation across its transnational network of oil extraction. The publication headquarters for Ahl al Naft was based in Beirut, with contributions by Arab writers from across the region. Meanwhile, the English-language magazine produced in central London made its way into the homes and offices of company employees living throughout Europe and the Middle East. Long features on national development programs in Iraq as well as lighter essays on artistic or historical issues were typical of the original content of the two separate publications.

While the print publications focused on cultivating an imagined corporate community knitting together IPC employees across multiple countries and positions, the IPC continued making films that evoked the national imaginary. After the completion of The Third River, the IPC established a film unit in Baghdad with a training program for Iraqis. In an internal report, the company assumed that its films “probably contributed to bringing Iraq before the public eye, both in the sense of awakening the interest of the Iraqi people themselves, many of whom had little or no concept of their own country’s history and an equally sketchy knowledge of development projects.”68 The colonialist hubris underlying this claim—that the company’s media campaign had the power to define how Iraqis viewed themselves as belonging to a modern nation—was fundamental to the IPC’s rationale for film use. The most explicit example of this was the titling of the company’s future cine-magazine, discussed in the next chapter: Beladuna, translating literally to “Our Country.”

3

Oil’s Cultural Workers

Textures and Tensions of the Iraq Petroleum Company Film Unit

Kerim Mejid leans his face into the camera, his left eye fixed on the viewfinder and his hand holding the tripod steady. His mustache is trim, his hair coifed, and he sports a smart double-breasted suit jacket and tie. The black-and-white photograph appears in the December 1952 issue of the Iraq Petroleum magazine at the top of Michael Clarke’s article about the making of The Third River. The caption reads, “Sayid Kerim Mejid, Iraqi Cameraman,” distinguishing him as the only member of the film crew to be identified by nationality. As a member of the small and predominantly British team that Arthur Elton of Film Centre had assembled, Mejid was an essential presence and interlocutor during the production of The Third River. In the Iraq Petroleum article, Clarke—the film’s director—writes, “To help us, not only technically but with his knowledge of language and customs, was Kerim Mejid, an Iraqi cameraman who had worked in Egypt at Studio Misr, and who has since gone to the U.S.A. on a UNESCO scholarship.”1 Clarke also celebrates the Third River crew’s collaborations with the local experts who guided their journey in Iraq. He writes,

During our stay we made countless friends among the people of Iraq and Syria—doctors, artists, engineers, writers, film people and many others; and we were never short of conversation and exchange of ideas. It is through such exchanges that one’s views develop; thus, although none but its makers can take the blame for what may be bad in the film, it is, where it achieves its object, the product of the unnumbered people who helped.2

This deferential acknowledgement of the invaluable and often intangible contributions that Iraqis made behind the camera reached an international audience among the company magazine’s more than twenty thousand readers in Britain, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon—the countries where the IPC operated. It also reflected the oil company’s broader approach both to film use and to the way it promoted its filmmaking in Iraq to Iraqis. The company relied on the creative and technical labor of its Iraqi employees and associates to authenticate its story-craft in Iraq, and in articles, advertisements, announcements and programs, the oil company used the image of Iraqis behind the camera to show that it was investing in local talent and contributing to the Iraqi cultural sphere.

FIGURE 29. Close-up of cameraman Kerim Mejid filming for The Third River, 1952, in Iraq Petroleum, December 1952, 14. Reproduced from the bp archive.

This was a significant departure from the prevailing approach of the AIOC and Shell, the IPC’s steering shareholders, which until this point had both relied almost entirely on British film units to produce their sponsored films. Such films had been conceived chiefly to inform and impress British shareholders and consumers, while also—in the case of the AIOC in Iran—attempting to appease the Shah. But, having watched Iranians successfully revolt against the foreign company, the IPC sought to use film to transform Iraqi perceptions. Perhaps, it hoped, it could win hearts and minds by associating its work with Iraqi national identity, cultivating local film culture, and promoting the identities of the filmmakers that made them. Iraqi members of the IPC film unit, rather than its British officers, were positioned as the visible face of the oil company’s film operations. A pamphlet about the company’s films, drafted by Peter Kelly to promote its 1954 film Oil of Iraq, for example, states,

Like the other films made by the I.P.C., this is a truly Iraqi film, made in and about Iraq, by a Film Unit in which Iraqi technicians are working and Iraqi young men are being trained in all branches of factual filmmaking. It is an Iraqi film, too, in a wider sense, for the film production programme of which it is a part has gained an established place in the life of Iraq.3

These claims mirrored the messaging of IPC films, like The Third River, that aimed to associate the oil company’s operations, broadly speaking, with Iraq’s national progress and social development.

The IPC film unit operated for seven years, and during that period, it produced three types of films in Arabic.4 This included thirteen episodes, or “issues,” of the cine-magazine Beladuna (Our Country, 1953–58) for theatrical distribution in Iraq; three safety and technical training films for nontheatrical distribution to oil company employees;5 and two prestige films that presented historical narratives about Iraq for broad audiences through national as well as international theatrical and nontheatrical distribution in Arabic and English.6 The IPC considered its documentary films in part—and condescendingly—as “a service” to the Iraqi people, as though they were ignorant of their own histories and circumstances and easily persuadable by moving pictures. One internal company memo from 1966, in summarizing the impact of the IPC film program, went so far as to state that the films “probably contributed to bringing Iraq before the public eye,” and elaborated that this entailed “awakening the interest of the Iraqi people themselves, many of whom had little or no concept of their own country’s history and an equally sketchy knowledge of development projects.”7 The IPC also distributed Arabic and English versions of the films in other countries to, as Peter Kelly put it, “induce an even wider appreciation of the progress of Iraq as a modern developing nation.”8 Like other British and U.S. agencies, the IPC wanted to protect its geopolitical interests in the Global South, and hoped that film would provide “a service” to Iraq, first, by presenting information about the country to the country and, second, by doing the work of public relations for the country to the world through the distribution of Arabic and English versions of the film in other countries.

Documentary film production in Iraq from the 1950s onward remained largely in the domain of industrial and government sponsorship. The influence of the IPC in bringing technical training and supply chains for filming equipment into the country was important for fostering the capacity of Iraq’s first generation of independent filmmakers.9 For the Iraqi men recruited to the film unit, the IPC offered professional training and experience in the artistic pursuit of filmmaking. In addition to a paycheck, the job offered mentorship, hands-on work with cameras and gear, and travel around the country and region on location shoots. On the one hand, film unit trainees flourished in the opportunities to write, direct, and edit the oil company’s documentaries. On the other, the IPC’s racialized hierarchies of employment extended from the oil fields in Kirkuk to the film unit in Baghdad where the young men found themselves in precarious livelihoods, navigating the tension between their loyalty to the unit and need for higher pay.10 Some openly expressed political views critiquing British imperialism and supported the 1958 revolution that abruptly ended the Hashemite regime and established the socialist Republic of Iraq under ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim. Several contributors to the IPC’s film and photography units, including Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Munir Bashir, Latif al Ani, and Yahyeh Faiq, were foundational to modernist movements in poetry, music, photography, and filmmaking, respectively, that shaped Iraq’s influential cultural sphere well beyond the dissolution of the IPC film unit in 1959. Iraq’s government would rely on the former unit’s assemblage of talented and professionalized local filmmakers to establish its General Organization of Cinema and Theater—the country’s epicenter of state-funded film production.

While the IPC utilized the image of its Iraqi employees as the face of its operations, the inner workings of the oil company film unit reveal a more complex story of camaraderie, mentorship, frustration, anger, and caretaking that connected the group of talented young Iraqis and their foreign counterparts. This chapter investigates the tensions that existed within the experiences of Iraqi creative professionals and trainees participating in the IPC’s film operations, including professionalization and exploitation, self-expression and political discontent. This exploration reveals a foundational duality inherent to neocolonial extraction, namely, that even as oil companies build infrastructure and training opportunities as resources to the local population, the limits of those terms quickly become apparent as political circumstances shift. Couched within the “truly Iraqi” presentation of the films was the bottom-line-driven agenda of a foreign corporation with a vital stake in shaping the political economy of fossil fuel extraction in postmandate Iraq. While film sponsorship provided some space for the possibility of artistic self-expression among Iraqi creatives, that expression was ultimately regulated and dictated by the oil company.

Moreover, the IPC’s film operations in Iraq were driven by its determination to avert another “crisis” of oil nationalization after the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s upheaval from Iran. Iraq’s income from the IPC’s oil production jumped significantly from 5.2 million GBP in 1950 to 58.3 million GBP in 1953 with the opening of the thirty-inch pipeline from Kirkuk to Banias, Syria, and the government channeled this tenfold influx in revenue into the recently established Iraq Development Board.11 As part of its strategy to inform Iraqi audiences about the direct benefits of oil for the country, the IPC film unit often featured the Development Board’s infrastructural projects in the Arabic-language cine-magazine. Yet the oil company’s public relations efforts failed to win over the population as it had aspired to do. Ultimately, as Hanna Batatu surmises, “the overflow of royalties made the state, from the economic standpoint, dangerously dependent upon the oil companies,” yet the material power the state possessed caused a “moral divorce from the mass of the politically conscious strata of the people” that was fatal to the Hashemite monarchy and the IPC.12 Revolutions in 1958, 1963, and 1968 diminished British control over Iraq’s resources and oil was nationalized in 1972, though under repressive circumstances of Ba‘th rule. What remained of the film unit equipment and staff was largely absorbed into the General Organization of Cinema and Theater, and some of the Iraqi filmmakers whose early careers began with the IPC continued to make government-sponsored films.

ASSEMBLING THE IPC FILM UNIT

Early in 1952, midway through the filming of The Third River, and on the heels of the IPC and Iraqi government’s fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement, Arthur Elton, in his capacity as the head of Film Centre, convinced the IPC to establish a film unit in Baghdad. Elton had three clear objectives for the film unit, which the unit’s director John Shearman shared in a 1987 interview. First, the film unit would actively train Iraqis in the British tradition of documentary filmmaking. Second, the film unit would make documentaries in Arabic for theatrical distribution that “explain to the people of Iraq what the oil company was doing in their territory, [and show] it was not really taking away the black gold because it was putting money back into national development.” Third, the film unit would make films specific to the technical aspects of oil company operations for the purpose of training Iraqi engineers, technicians, and geologists.13 The aspect of the film unit’s role in actively training Iraqis was central, as emphasized in the IPC’s published profile in Film User, which stressed that its aims were “not only to project modern Iraq, but also to provide a continuing program of films to assist in training the craftsmen and technicians on whom the country depends for its further advance.”14 In short, the constitution and output of the film unit represented an investment in Iraq’s progress through the story of national development and also through the training and advancement of Iraqi citizens working for the company at large, whether as filmmakers or petroleum engineers.

To assemble the unit, Elton began recruiting British documentary filmmakers with experience making infrastructural films for fossil fuel companies. He first approached Michael Clarke, who—still in Iraq, wrapping up production on The Third River—was a logical choice to head the film unit. Clarke, however, declined the job because, as he recalled later, he and his wife did not want to relocate away from her permanent academic position in the United Kingdom.15 Next, Elton offered the job to Shearman, who had experience working on films for Shell and was an assistant producer to Edgar Antsey, at British Transport Films. Shearman felt ambivalent about taking the position and moving to Baghdad, so he asked Antsey, his mentor, for advice.16 Antsey was a close colleague of Elton’s: five years earlier, they had worked together to develop a program of six Shell films in Venezuela.17 Antsey insisted that Shearman seize the opportunity to establish a new film unit in Iraq, and Shearman listened.

FIGURE 30. Cameraman Peter Kelly harnessed to an oil well rig while filming for the IPC, c. 1952. Reproduced from the bp archive.

After securing Shearman as the founding director for the job, Elton began recruiting a permanent staff for the IPC film unit in Baghdad. He tapped Peter Kelly, the young British cinematographer who was already in Iraq documenting the construction of IPC’s new pipeline with Clarke. Kelly recalled, “During the filming of [The Third River], they asked me if I would like to be part of a film unit, which they were thinking of starting. And, I said, of course, I’d love to be. Yes, that’s how that started. Then we made a bunch of documentaries.”18 Elton identified three other men from London’s industrial film circle to bring on board: Philip Law, a cameraman working for the National Coal Board on the Mining Review; Tim Wilson, a visual aids specialist coming from a position with the National Film Board; and John Armstrong, a director with experience in documentary.

Shearman moved his family to Baghdad toward the end of 1952, at the same time as John Percival, the IPC’s incoming staff photographer. Percival’s role as chief photographer would be entwined with the film unit, professionally and personally. Traveling throughout Iraq and often alongside the film unit, Percival supplied photographs documenting development projects and official events that would be printed on the covers and in the pages of the IPC’s magazines, Iraq Petroleum and Ahl al Naft.19 Percival had already befriended Kelly during the filming of The Third River. While preparing for his move from England, Percival wrote to Kelly in anticipation of their reunion in Baghdad, sharing his expectation that Shearman, Kelly, and the others would enjoy full social lives in Baghdad. He wrote to Kelly about his experience as an expatriate living in Baghdad that “life can be good, even in Iraq, after all its [sic] what one makes of it all, and when we are all installed in Baghdad and J. S. [John Shearman] as well I see no reason why we shouldn’t all enjoy ourselves.”20 Upon arrival, Kelly, Law, Wilson, and Armstrong initially resided in Baghdad’s Sindbad Hotel until Film Centre arranged a contract with the oil company to provide accommodation for the foreign employees of the film unit. The IPC housed the four together in a large, centrally located “bachelors’” house on Al Rashid Street near downtown Baghdad.21 According to Kelly, the generous accommodations became a vibrant social hub of expatriate living, where they hosted “parties almost every night.”22 During the day, the crew was consumed by the logistics of establishing an operational film unit, which included ordering and managing equipment, developing ideas for company films, and of course recruiting and bringing on board local men with relevant experience or interest.

When Shearman took the job of founding director, he received a brief from Elton about the film unit’s mission not just to oversee film productions, but also to train Iraqis in the practice of documentary filmmaking. The oil company film unit drew together Iraqi filmmakers with a wide range of experience and even offered a launch point for some careers. As a steady source of income and a chance to learn specialized skills in the technical aspects of cinematography and editing, the film unit was also attractive to young men without any previous film experience. The training program in the technical aspects of documentary filmmaking was enmeshed with the oil company’s public relations agenda. The films that the unit made to promote Iraq’s national development and oil modernization story were accompanied by publicity of Iraqi contributions to the films to authenticate them as “truly Iraqi.”

In some ways, the film unit picked up where an earlier effort to produce Iraqi films, Baghdad Studio, had left off. In 1945, when the Baghdad Studio for Film and Cinema was founded, the Iraq Times reported, its Iraqi owners contacted the British producer Reginald Fogswell to “supervise the production of their Arabic films, and train Iraqi staff to handle the job themselves in the future.”23 Fogswell’s efforts, however, would be short-lived. Baghdad Studio successfully produced two narrative films, ʿAlīyā wa ʿIsām (Aliya and Issam, 1948) and Layla fi al-Iraq (Layla in Iraq, 1949), but then in 1950 the studio’s proprietors suspended filmmaking operations and pivoted the business to dubbing foreign films in Farsi and Arabic for distribution in the region.24 Baghdad Studio also began contracting its facilities to foreign production companies to produce narrative films in Iraq. In 1951, a Turkish production company shot two Turkish-language films in Iraq featuring Turkish actors; the film was dubbed in Arabic and Farsi, and Baghdad Studio retained exclusive rights to the distribution of the dubbed films.25 Film production in Iraq remained scarce until the IPC established its film unit in 1952.

In Baghdad, Shearman and his team began to actively recruit locals with related experience or at minimum an interest in filmmaking to join the film unit. In addition to publishing newspaper advertisements, the effort relied on informal channels. Kelly recalled the role that chance played in recruiting his Iraqi counterparts: “You know, Iraq, or Baghdad was a very small society at that time. And, I think they might well have found us.” Kelly remembered meeting Yahyeh Faiq, the director, while walking along a river, having “met him at a party somewhere.” Spontaneously, Kelly invited him to join the film unit: “I asked him what he was doing and he wasn’t doing anything. And, I said, ‘Have you ever thought of joining a film unit?’ And he said he hadn’t at that time. And, I said, ‘Well you should come and see us. Come and see John Shearman . . . and see if you can find anything that interests you.’ So that’s how we found him!”26

At the time, Faiq was an established theatre actor and director with filmmaking experience. He had worked as assistant director to the French director André Shatan on Baghdad Studio’s ʿAlīyā wa ʿIsām, and also acted in the film.27 In 1951, just before joining the film unit, he had directed a film about holy shrines that was never shown in Iraq, but apparently well-received in Pakistan.28 At thirty years old, Faiq was older than most of the IPC film unit staff, several of whom, including Peter Kelly, were in their early twenties.

He was not the only person to arrive to the film unit with significant experience. Kerim Mejid, or “Amu Kerim” (Uncle Kerim) as he was known, had established his career in radio production, studied cinematography in the United States, and already worked with Kelly as the assistant cameraman on The Third River before joining the film unit.29 Simon Mehran, an Egyptian national, was also an established cameraman by the time he joined. Far too experienced to be considered trainees, these men earned production credits alongside their British counterparts for their contributions in directing and cinematography. During their time in the film unit, Faiq and Mejid continued to pursue their independent careers in filmmaking. With their friend Aziz Ali, they cofounded a company called Aflam al Irak (Films of Iraq), which produced the fiction feature (a “melodrama”) Warda (1956) as well as documentaries about Iraq’s industrial and agricultural development.30

FIGURE 31. Peter Kelly and Simon Mehran filming as part of the IPC film unit, c. 1953. Reproduced from the bp archive.

Younger men with far less or no prior experience in filmmaking applied to join the film unit as trainees, including Abdul Latif Saleh, Majid Kamel, and Yousef (Albert) Andrews as assistant cinematographers and Muhammad Shukri Jameel and Kadhim Jawad al-Etri as assistant editors and assistant directors. In our interview, Jamil recounted that his training began with Kelly, on cinematography, then Shearman, who worked with him in the cutting room, and later he received additional training while working with foreign filmmakers who were on assignment in Iraq, including Michael Clarke, William Novick, and Peter Hopkinson.31 Many others passed through the film unit in various positions, including Abdullah Hassoon, Weejah Hussein al-Amin, Azad (Hovancien), Victor Haddad, Atef al-Zaher, Ahmed Suleiman, “Katchick” (or Khadjik) Misaq, and Fathallah (last name unknown). While their names do not appear in credits of IPC films, they are mentioned with affection and familiarity in the letters that Kelly exchanged with Shearman and Saleh (long after he left the unit in 1954) and in al-Etri’s recollections.32

FIGURE 32. Peter Kelly, Abdul Latif Saleh, and Yousef Andrews filming as part of the IPC film unit, c. 1954. Reproduced from the bp archive.

From the outset, the film unit shared some equipment with Baghdad Studio and Baghdad Radio. However, to become fully operational, the film unit directly imported equipment that was not yet available in Iraq. Kelly oversaw the acquisition of equipment for the film unit, including 35mm cameras, film stock, and lenses. Postproduction was a resource-heavy and often time-intensive process split between London and Baghdad. Color film processing and editing were exported to London. Rushes were flown back and forth on a regular basis between Baghdad and London at various stages of postproduction so that commentary could be written, and music recorded in Iraq. Baghdad Radio provided the unit access to a recording facility, and all sound mixing, dubbing, and transfers were done in London.33

In February 1954, Shearman issued the first formal standing orders to the film unit “so that all Unit personnel may understand the working of the Unit as a whole.” He expected personnel to study and understand the orders, which detailed the logistics and movements of film production equipment and materials, and the labor chain that connected the film unit in Baghdad with the related facilities in Britain. Film stock arrived in bulk from England by airfreight and the orders specified how the stock, once received in Baghdad, should be handled, stored, and accessed. They also described the processes for tracking and tracing who performed each routine task, noting that Abdul Latif Saleh would be thereafter “held responsible” for maintaining stock records and processing film orders.34 The regularization and regulation of daily movements and activities signified a codification of the film unit’s training model and a deliberate movement toward the stated goal for the film unit to be more self-sustaining and Iraqi-led.

The standing orders were drafted in anticipation of Kelly’s pending departure from Iraq in 1954. After two years working for the IPC film unit, Kelly left to take a job with the National Film Board in Canada. Kelly recounted his decision to leave the unit during an interview late in his life, explaining:

It wasn’t home, we knew where home was . . . but it felt like home. At the end of my time in Iraq, the Film Center people (Sinclair Road and others) said that it perhaps wasn’t a good thing to stay on in Iraq, because you became used to a lifestyle that wasn’t possible anywhere else. [. . .] I’m not sure that I particularly wanted to leave at the time, but I didn’t try to fight it. I was one of those people who agreed with people’s suggestions of where to go next. I was just incredibly lucky.35

Kelly had influenced the operations of the film unit as well as the social life of its members. He mentored Iraqi trainees closely, especially the assistant cinematographers, and he formed a particularly strong bond with Saleh. After his departure, Kelly regularly exchanged long letters with Saleh, Shearman, and others. They reveal the camaraderie that developed among the foreign and local staff working together in the film unit’s Baghdad office and on location throughout Iraq and the region—an affinity that ended up outlasting the existence of the film unit itself.

In one 1957 letter, Saleh fills Kelly in on the news of his former coworkers with a sense of lively intimacy:

Old Mohd. Shukri is back from Persia, broke as usual. [. . .] Fathallah is now proud of his typing now that he has seen some typing errors in your letter, but unfortunately he is still looking for a missing key and nobody is helping him find it. [. . .] Kadhim, the man who washes his face ten times a day, he is still singing [. . .] Atif, he is still polishing Simon’s shoes and as you once said ‘if he walks as half [sic] as he talks he will be a P.M.’ [. . .] Victor, and his Nose, he still [sic] growing American, now that the Rock n’ Roll has been shown in Baghdad. [. . .] Majid, has now become Victor’s shadow [. . .] Ahmed, he is the clown in the Film Unit, composed the music and sang the songs in Hajii Omran Film. [. . .] Albert, he meets his girl friend on Monday and Friday on [sic] every week and have [sic] a quarrel with her and ends up with nothing but I suffer his bad temper the next day [. . .] now Meself [sic] winding, getting fatter & fatter & fatter just now J. Armstrong said ‘Latif you are a Kharouf (Sheep) and how right he was.36

FIGURE 33. Abdul Latif Saleh with unnamed members of the IPC film unit filming on location in Basrah, in Iraq Petroleum, December 1957, 28. Reproduced from the bp archive.

In another letter from the same year, Saleh updates Kelly on his most recent work with the unit and expresses gratitude to Kelly as his mentor, writing: “I think you are proud of me now as much as I am proud when somebody asks me who learned you [sic] this business? And I answered Peter Kelly did.”37 Later, Saleh shares with Kelly that he felt particularly proud of a film that he shot about a blood transfusion (likely an episode of Beladuna) and tried to send a copy of it to Kelly in Canada.38

The letters to Kelly also chronicle the changing roles within the film unit as trainees were encouraged to draft scripts, handle camerawork, and edit footage. “Mr. Shearman asked me to try to write a script for the H.O.S. (Housing ownership scheme) and I try to do my best [sic],”39 Saleh recounted in one letter. Meanwhile, Shearman wrote optimistically about the unit’s training efforts, reporting to Kelly,

The boys are coming on apace—Abdul Latif is shooting a Beladuna ‘Survey of Basrah’ item—port, Fao, Shatt, roads, city and festival of the Persian New Year sort of stuff, which old Memdoh Zeki wrote the script for. Majid has been doing some independent work on Phil’s picture, and some odd jobs. The two in the cutting room are really getting a grip, and stuff is coming up edited with great skill now, without any of us having to do more than make a few suggestions. Everybody is well, even Simon!40

Shearman seems both proud of the trainees’ achievements and sincere in his belief that the unit is supporting their professional development.

Saleh’s letters support that impression, mentioning an opportunity afforded to his fellow film unit member Muhammad Shukri Jameel to travel abroad on assignment for the company. The IPC had sent Jamil to London to work alongside the British film editor Alvin Bailey on the final edit for a special issue of Beladuna focused on the Iraq Development Board. Saleh wrote: “Mohammed now in London cutting the development of Iraq film wich [sic] he was asst. director of it [sic]. that film was mad [sic] in Iraq last year, Peter Hopkenson was the director and the cameraman, and it is about how we are going to spend the oil money, I think it is a very good picture.” Elton then asked Jamil to extend his stay for what Saleh said was an extra six weeks to direct an episode of Beladuna about the experience of Iraqi students in England, and he obliged.41

Jamil wrote an essay in 1958 for Iraq Petroleum recounting his experiences doing research for and writing the script, which aimed to represent the perspective of Iraqi students arriving in England for the first time to pursue degrees in higher education before returning to Iraq. He describes locating and casting Hilmi, the film’s principal subject, who studied education and worked as a student-teacher; directing the film shoot over three weeks alongside the cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky; and editing the final cut. Jamil’s article notes that “very soon the Iraqi students will appear in one of the Biladuna films which the IPC film unit makes regularly for Iraq”—reminding readers that the IPC was providing both professional opportunities and cultural contributions to the Iraqi people.42 Both the film project and Jamil’s recounting of its making in the company magazine showcase opportunities for professionalization and cultural exchange afforded to Iraqis, such as Hilmi and Jamil, who were sponsored by the Iraqi embassy and the IPC respectively to study and work in England. Highlighting an aspect of his professional growth on the trip, Jamil writes in closing, “For a few days, I became the student” when, he explains, “I visited film laboratories, recording studios, and finally Pinewood studio itself, where British feature films are made—all useful experiences to take back with me to Baghdad and the Unit in which I work.”43 The ripple effects of Jamil’s experience in shaping the aspirations of others in the film unit are evident in Saleh’s letter to Kelly, as he expresses hopes that he too might have the opportunity to travel to London and train in the studio and development lab.44 For workers in the film unit, these were valued opportunities—and thus the IPC demonstrated a commitment to film professionalism in Iraq, albeit in limited ways that were tied to its self-promotion.

FIGURE 34. Mohammed Shukri Jameel filming for the IPC film unit on location in London, in Iraq Petroleum, October 1958, 32. Reproduced from the bp archive.

From the perspective of the IPC, the film unit existed in large part to produce content that celebrated state power and national development. In Jamil’s reflections during our interview, he said that the film unit, performing a kind of “magic,” was able to “show the government to the people” and demonstrate its efforts at raising their standard of living.45 Iraqi members of the film unit participated in developing story ideas for Beladuna, and Shearman encouraged them to step into roles such as writing, shooting, and directing the short films. Even so, British film unit members typically oversaw editorial decisions regarding the montage and commentary for the cine-magazine. Content was ultimately regulated by the company and censored by the Iraqi state, effectively eliminating the expression of divergent perspectives. Thus, the company’s claim that the film unit produced “truly Iraqi” films is misleading, as ultimately the Iraqi “spirit” of the films was contained and managed by the foreign corporation to conform to its bottom-line-driven agenda in crafting Iraq’s oil story.

THE IPC’S FILM OUTPUT

Under Shearman’s guidance, the Iraqi and British members of the film unit were responsible for regularly producing the IPC films distributed in Iraq. However, the oil company was also interested in making documentaries about Iraq that were intended for audiences outside the country, much like the AIOC’s Persian Story. For these productions, Film Centre acted as an intermediary between the oil company and British filmmakers, hiring outside directors and crews to make prestige films including Ageless Iraq (1954) and Rivers of Time (1957). While the films were conceived to be “intended to introduce primarily foreign audiences to the country, its progress and its place in the Middle East,” Kelly notes that Ageless Iraq in particular “proved to be highly popular in Iraq as well,” indicating that, from the company’s perspective, Iraqi audiences were receptive to the IPC films and an increase in output was warranted.46 In 1954, the (by-then) well-established IPC film unit made the color film Oil of Iraq, which was intended to “explain the oil industry to the people of Iraq.” The company made a point to promote this as a “truly Iraqi film” and a testament to the “documentary film movement” that had been founded in Iraq due to the IPC’s film production work.47

Shearman’s mandate was to make films for a general Iraqi audience that would give them a favorable impression of the oil company’s presence in their country. In consultation with “local people in Baghdad,” Kelly recalled in our conversation, Shearman came up with what became the centerpiece of the IPC film unit’s output: a cine-magazine comprised of short documentaries in Arabic that “reports on the many developments in the life of the nation” planned for theatrical distribution in the IPC’s operating areas and throughout Iraq.48 British and U.S. newsreels were by then included as regular openers of film programs in Iraqi theaters, and the IPC cine-magazine films were similarly screened in advance of features. Episodes of the cine-magazine were the first films exhibited as such to feature stories about Iraq that went beyond international press headlines. Moreover, what distinguished the cine-magazine from international newsreels was not only its focus on stories in Iraq, but also the fact that it was produced by a crew based in Iraq. The title Shearman gave the cine-magazine, Beladuna, translates to “our country,” suggesting Iraqi citizens’ perspective, while also implying a unity between the sponsoring company and the government. This was, in short, a cinematic project to coalesce an imagined community around the idea of modern Iraq and its progress as a benevolent oil state.

Regular issues of the cine-magazine were produced about twice a year, and each issue ran for approximately twenty minutes and contained two or three short films (referred to as “items”) that focused on various topics related to development in Iraq, such as transportation infrastructure, agriculture, industry, and economic modernization. In other words, the IPC film unit was adhering to Elton’s so-called “First Law of Industrial Sponsorship,” avoiding any explicit focus on the oil company and instead boosting its reputation by association.49 The first issue of Beladuna, for example, included stories on the date industry, bridge construction, and the national airline. Subsequent issues did eventually introduce items spotlighting the operations of oil infrastructure, but the overall emphasis remained on the benefits of oil-funded development and national belonging: an issue that covered the operations of an oil pipeline in Basra also explored the operations of an infant clinic in Baghdad. Other topics included cotton spinning and weaving, modern bus service, malaria control, and architectural and urban planning developments in the capital.

Early black-and-white Beladuna films used didactic Arabic commentary, staged shots, and reenactments to succinctly construct stories of special interest for Iraqi audiences. The popular Iraqi oud player Munir Bashir composed the melodic and upbeat title music and soundtrack, recorded with an ensemble of musicians, which audiences came to associate with the distinct sound of Beladuna.50 While the subject matter and musical score of the cine-magazine certainly reflected the IPC film unit’s distinct connection to Iraq, the overall sound design and visual aesthetics initially tended to mimic somewhat the brevity and tone of most newsreels: restrained voiceovers, steadily paced takes, and upbeat musical interludes. However, couched within the look and feel of Beladuna was a distinct embrace of playful sonic elements—such as diegetic music and voices—and personalized character perspectives within the action.

In the fourth issue of Beladuna, for example, the subject of Baghdad’s modern bus system is approached through the multiple viewpoints of the city’s residents who interact with it: passengers, drivers, mechanics, dispatchers, and planners.51 While the film ultimately examines the ingenuity required to engineer and administer urban public transportation, the narrative weaves this storyline together with images and sounds that reflect more intimate and sensorial experiences of the city: close-ups on a woman and child waking up, several shots of a man baking bread, and, set to a popular song and diegetic engine noise, a sequence of passengers boarding the bus with interior shots of male, female, and child riders laughing, smiling, and chatting. At one point, a staged conversation in Arabic between two strangers is featured, in which one rider with a wide smile points out to another gentleman that smoking is prohibited onboard, leading him to call out in dismay and rise to exit. The moment contains a playful air of comedic reprieve in contrast to a subsequent scene’s relatively dry examination of how bus tickets are printed and cut. Like many of the Beladuna films, this issue features numerous montages that bring together differing vantages on the city and landscape. This constant shifting in camera position has the effect of creating an experience of viewing space through the eyes of Iraq’s many citizens—bus drivers, children, adult passengers, pedestrians, passersby—coming from all walks of life.

FIGURE 35. Virtuoso composer and oud player Munir Bashir with unnamed musicians in studio recording a film score for the IPC, c. 1954. Reproduced from the bp archive.

In 1954, at the insistence of the oil company, the cine-magazine changed from black-and-white to color. The decision clashed with the film unit’s ethos around film professionalization. Shearman had been opposed to this change, which he thought would be detrimental to their effort to properly train new cinematographers since shooting exclusively in color yields easier results than monochrome.52 Nevertheless, beginning with the sixth issue, Beladuna was made in color.53 The film unit increasingly took other creative liberties with the format and content of the cine-magazine. The eighth issue, instead of covering two or three different topics as Beladuna had to date, presented a seventeen-minute-long standalone documentary about the catastrophic Tigris River flood in 1954. Seasonal flooding had been a long-standing natural occurrence in Iraq, and over the centuries it had periodically devastated Baghdad. In 1954, just as the construction of a Development Board–funded dam on the Tigris was underway, river levels reached record highs, flooding approximately 5,500 square kilometers of agricultural land adjacent to the capital city and displacing more than 250,000 residents of eastern Baghdad.54

Within the framework of promoting the Development Board’s flood-prevention scheme, the eighth issue of Beladuna was made as a special documentary about the 1954 flood, titled “Munqith al-Iraq” (The Savior of Iraq). The film offers a distinctly humanistic perspective on the flooding, emphasizing the hardships for displaced Iraqis and at the same time documenting community-based and state-led responses, as well as international aid efforts. Taken together, the writing, sound, cinematography, and editing in this film reflect an aesthetic turn within the cine-magazine. Filming around the unfolding events of the flood and response efforts apparently freed the film unit to embrace a more spontaneous and intuitive relationship to the subject matter. Postproduction elements such as writing, sound design, and editing are liberated from the relatively rigid constraints of the cine-magazine’s somewhat newsreel-inspired look and feel. In comparison to earlier issues, “The Savior of Iraq” presents a contemplative and fluid narrative, incorporating, for the first time, poetry, marked silences, more diegetic voices and atmospheric noise, slow tracking shots, and long takes. As a result, the documentary heightens affective and experiential aspects of the human relationship to nature in the face of catastrophe.

Aerial views of the riverbanks convey the scale of the disaster on the city and are followed by long sequences from embedded vantages on the ground that depict the aftermath of the flooding, as displaced residents are forced to flee, carrying furniture over bridges and moving into white tents. The film’s visuals focus on the need for an all-hands-on-deck response to the disaster: soldiers, students, and other civilians shoveling and heaving sandbags to reinforce the levee, the coordination of food and foreign aid dispersal, and the establishment of mobile medical clinics to assist affected Baghdadis. This wide scope of action is occasionally punctuated by shots that focus directly on the suffering of the people in Baghdad through, as examples, an intimate close-up that captures the distress in a woman’s glance, a medium shot of a mother holding her baby tightly in her arms while riding on the back of a tractor to cross a bridge to safety, and a silent forty-five-second-long tracking shot from the river (unaccompanied by any voiceover or music) that registers the isolation experienced by residents in mud-reed houses who have become separated from the city on small islands that formed in flooded areas.

In addition to offering a portrait of the national response to the emergency, the IPC documentary signified an unprecedented collaboration of Iraqi creative labor: writers, poets, cinematographers, film editors, and musicians. Their contributions shaped every stage of the production from cinematography to sound. Footage was shot by six cinematographers and assistant cinematographers on staff, including Abdul Latif Saleh, Majid Kamel, Simon Mehran, and Victor Haddad, whose names appear in the credits alongside their British counterparts Peter Kelly and Phil Law. Yahyeh Faiq directed the film, a credit that, his family notes in a social media post, led to his membership in the British Film Syndicate and elevated his professional reputation.55 Mohammed Shukri Jameel edited the film, receiving a solo credit for his work.

While previous issues of Beladuna had featured relatively detached voiceover commentary, this documentary included a more emotional and immediate feel, thanks to the work of the Palestinian poet and artist Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, whom Clarke had hired years earlier to translate the script for The Third River. By then Jabra was on staff in the IPC public relations office, working as a writer for the company magazine and film projects. He wrote a commentary that guides the viewer to make sense of the chaotic scenes unfolding on screen, providing descriptive details, astonishing technical figures (e.g., water levels rising at a rate of 10cm an hour), and wider context as the flood became an international concern and Iraq received aid from other Arab countries, as well as Pakistan, Turkey, India, Iran, and the United States.56 However, it was Jabra’s choice to feature the poetry of two renowned Iraqi poets throughout the film that most influenced the uniquely contemplative tone of the film.

At three key points, the soundtrack and commentary are punctuated by the voices of Iraqi poets Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri and Nazik al-Mala’ika, heard reciting excerpts of their own poetry, verses contending with the beauty, force, and ferocity of nature. The poets are unnamed and unseen in the film, yet their voices and words would have been recognizable to many in Iraq. The film opens simply with the prelude “A poet once said,” followed by al-Jawahiri’s recitation of a verse that echoes his well-known poem “Salāmʿalā Hadbat al-ʿIrāq” (Peace on the Hills of Iraq, 1947).57 Translated from the original Arabic spoken in the film, the verse is:

Peace on the hills of Iraq, and both sides of the river and the water flowing.

Peace on the date trees and the mountaintops.58

Although the lines of poetry presented in the film speak to the country’s natural beauty and are apparently innocuous in content, he was in fact one of Iraq’s most outspoken revolutionary poets.59 The inclusion of al-Jawahiri’s voice at the outset of the film thus signified a noticeable departure not only in terms of the composition and tone of the cine-magazine’s typical commentary, but also as a gesture toward solidarity with the people of Iraq and departure from the tendency to tow the government line.

Later in the film, Nazik al-Mala’ika—a pioneer of free-verse Arabic poetry—recites one stanza from an untitled poem she wrote during the 1954 flood, which personifies the Tigris as a lover.60 She reads the following stanza (translated here from the original Arabic spoken in the film) twice during the film:

Where do we run, when he has wrapped his arms

Around the city’s shoulders?

He works slowly, firmly, and calmly

Pouring from his lips

Clay kisses that cover our sad pastures.61

First, al-Mala’ika is heard reading the evocative verses alone over a sequence of footage depicting rescue boats being paddled across the water. The sensuous image of the Tigris as an impassioned lover, enveloping if not suffocating the city with his affections, places the desperation and vulnerabilities of rescue efforts captured on camera into tension with a reminder of the enduring and complicated dependency that binds the Iraqi people to the river. A second recitation occurs toward the end of the film, following a scene in which new pipelines were constructed to distribute gas and oil to the city, which had been cut off from its energy supply in the aftermath of the flood. Here, two female voices recite the stanza simultaneously, which emphasizes and amplifies al-Mala’ika’s poetry. The effect is haunting and marks the end of the era of suffering at the river’s edge, because, as the narrator explains thereafter, this will be the last flood of its kind now that the “savior of Iraq” is on its way. Iraq’s so-called savior is then revealed to be infrastructure, namely the Tharthar Dam that was being planned and constructed by the Iraq Development Board using oil revenues from the fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement with the IPC.

The Iraq Development Board primarily directed the state’s oil income toward large-scale infrastructural projects, including the Tharthar Dam on the Tigris, which mitigated the destruction caused by river flooding and provided a regular water supply for irrigation.62 Environmental historian Dale Stahl argues that control over water was the raison d’être of the Development Board: “While oil revenues could easily have been disbursed through the normal bureaucracy, the potential for irrigation and water management to radically alter social and political development provided the basis for arguments to coordinate development through a single agency. Oil was the critical financial input, but water was the vital political justification.”63 Engineering the controlled flow of Iraq’s rivers empowered the ruling class to determine land values through the flood mitigation and irrigation planning. Batatu surmises that “the benefit from the control of the environment was general, but these undertakings also afforded expectation of greater incomes for the already advantaged shaikhs and the other strata of the landed class. At the same time, the strengthening of the state’s command of the rivers and the expansion of its potentially cultivatable land increased, to a significant degree, its ability to enforce its will.” Meanwhile, the population at large still lacked tangible benefits from the government’s influx of oil capital—perhaps best illustrated by the fact that over six-sevenths of the population remained illiterate in 1958. As Batatu argues, the government’s bountiful revenue from oil (65.7 percent of state income in 1954) made it “dangerously dependent” on the oil company and divorced its economic prosperity from the people it governed.64

The IPC’s film about the floods, on the one hand, justified the Development Board’s rationale for state expenditure on dams and infrastructural projects that controlled the flow of water using visible evidence of the urgent conditions on the ground. In this way, “The Savior of Iraq” reframed expenditure of oil revenues on long-term infrastructural projects in terms of the well-being of Iraqi citizens, as opposed to the economic prosperity of the ruling class and landowners. At the same time, the film represented a new measure of artistic achievement within the film unit that brought together Iraqi talent and as a result produced a turn toward including contemplative cinematographic choices and poetic beats in the cine-magazine’s look and feel. While it portrayed state infrastructures at work, the documentary exceeded the norms of traditional infrastructural films by focusing on lived experience, adding a new dimension to the oil story.

In addition to producing regular and occasional special issues of the cine-magazine Beladuna for Iraqi audiences, the IPC film unit made films for English-speaking audiences that venerated the Hashemite monarchy. For example, in 1953, the film unit made an English-language version of the issue documenting the enthronement of Faisal II titled “Malika wa Biladuna” (Our King and Our Country), circulated abroad as an international public relations showpiece.65 They also filmed the British Trade Fair in Baghdad in 1954, the British handover of Habbaniya Airbase in 1955, and the Iraq Development Board “Development Weeks” that showcased completed and planned projects each year. In a 1957 letter to Peter Kelly, John Shearman alludes to the performative nature of this relationship: “Development Week is upon us again—with two new bridges finished in Baghdad (one has no road leading from it), and a series of dams, factories and roads to be opened in the North—it looks like being a hectic seven days for the Unit. I am keeping well out of it all—just drinking the Prime Minister’s drinks and watching events through the bottom of an upturned glass.”66

Years later, in an internal 1966 memo, the oil company’s public relations office explained that IPC films “were made with the agreement and co-operation of the Iraq Government, which welcomed the concept that films would publicize the country’s historical traditions, plans for development and, generally speaking, arouse public interest, both inside and outside Iraq.” In fact, the company mentions that, broadly speaking, its public relations work was undertaken “very often with [the Government’s] active encouragement, since they tended to look to the IPC to do a job of general publicity that, for various reasons, they were unable to do themselves,” producing at a regular pace, for example, high-quality brochures, magazines, and films, sometimes in more than one language. In retrospect, the memo acknowledges that it became obvious that the downside of this tacit arrangement “was that we tended possibly to become too identified with the existing regime.”67 Yet it seems unlikely that IPC officials fully grasped the risk of performing this role vis-à-vis the Hashemite monarchy in the years when the oil company was making films in Iraq. The film unit had to perform a balancing act to appeal to a public while also securing the good graces of the government, whose censors reviewed and had editorial authority over their films. And so, they made a cine-magazine and occasional prestige films that undoubtedly served the state, raising awareness about the infrastructural development plans of the Development Board and (without naming the oil company) pushing the message that existing oil revenues benefited the country and led to national progress. However, the IPC was ultimately unable to avoid the outcome of being perceived as a mouthpiece for the Hashemite monarchy.

INEQUITIES AND CUTBACKS

The transfer of Kelly’s stockroom responsibilities to Saleh and increased independence of Iraqi cinematographers, directors, and editors signaled a shift toward increased Iraqi administration of daily operations in the film unit. Nevertheless, the IPC maintained a structural hierarchy across all its operations, from the fields to the film unit, that set the rank and salaries of British employees above those of Iraqis in the company. In the film unit, this hierarchy was most evident in the income discrepancies and preferential conditions for promotions and leaves. Exacerbating this were cutbacks in the IPC’s budget due to reduced oil production in the aftermath of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decisive nationalization of the Suez Canal and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Egypt in the fall of 1956. In a botched effort to avert a disaster in global shipping supply chains, the Anglo-French occupation of the Suez Canal effectively resulted in the paralysis of shipping through the canal. Israel’s aggression in Egypt sent shockwaves throughout the region and oil prices spiked on the global market. In Syria, three critical pumping stations on the IPC’s Kirkuk to Banias pipeline were sabotaged. The Syrian government used the catastrophic blow to the pipeline and Iraqi oil supply as leverage to pressure Britain to broker a ceasefire and Israel’s withdrawal from Egypt.68 In March 1957, as Israel pulled troops, work commenced to immediately repair the damaged infrastructure and reestablish the flow of oil from Kirkuk.69 The financial losses incurred on the IPC’s part resulted in cutbacks in its film operations that were restored by spring of 1957. However, Shearman’s message to Kelly indicates that, while the resumption of pumping to Banias helped to restore his budget toward completion of the IPC’s bigger film projects, staff compensation for the Iraqi members of the film unit remained dismal.70

Discrepancies in compensation, promotion, and annual leave policies were a point of contention among the Iraqi staff, who directed their displeasure at the “Company” as distinct from Shearman, their direct supervisor in the unit.71 In fall of 1956, Yousef (Albert) Andrews wrote at length to Peter Kelly about his intentions to leave the IPC film unit, despite his affection for his colleagues. “All this means more work to me,” he wrote, “but still I haven’t left the I.P.C. even though I was given a raise of ID 1,500, and the only reason I haven’t left is that I love the Unit and especially working under Mr. Shearman’s suppervision [sic].”72 The following year, he wrote to Kelly again explaining his intention to quit the film unit and take a job elsewhere. “I haven’t told Mr. Shearman because I haven’t had a definite answer from the Company I intend to work with,” he confessed, “and to tell you the truth I will not be sorry for leaving, except I will always think of Mr. Shearman, he is such a nice boss, it is because of him that everybody is still working for the IPC, but don’t be surprised if one day you’ll hear that most of us have left the IPC Film Unit and started working with the U.S.I.S. You know they pay well.”73 Andrews’s letters make evident the push and pull trainees navigated between their feelings of loyalty to the film unit and their mentors, Shearman and Kelly, and being underpaid.

Shearman’s inability to adequately compensate his Iraqi trainees made the film unit vulnerable to the efforts of the U.S. Information Service (USIS) to poach their well-trained staff. By this point, the USIS had established its Baghdad office to promote films in Iraq as part of the United States’ global campaign to disseminate anticommunist propaganda and cultivate American cultural diplomacy.74 Just weeks after Kelly received Andrews’s letter, he received another from Abdul Latif Saleh echoing feelings of dissatisfaction with the salary and his temptation to leave the IPC for the USIS. Saleh made his impatience with the situation clear, despite Kelly’s prior advice to remain in the position in the hope that the political circumstances affecting the oil company would be resolved and a pay raise would be granted. “Probobly [sic], I will not finish this film, it all depends on the answer Mr. Shearman will give me on his retern [sic] from London after conferences with IPC in London,” Saleh shared. “Befor [sic] you left you advised me to stay a year and wait for results, well until now nothing has happened and I have been offered a salary of ID. [Iraqi Dinars] 120, with the U.S.I.S. and if the conference does not turn out good then I have no joice [sic] but to resign and start working with the U.S.I.S.”75 Saleh’s next letter, from December 1957, arrived in response to Kelly’s continued guidance to stay with the film unit and remain patient as Shearman worked to negotiate his promotion. The letter demonstrates Saleh’s openness to Kelly’s guidance on the matter. “As you see I am still working with the I.P.C., giving up all the thoughts of joining the U.S.I.S. after I get [sic] your letter wich [sic] you adviced [sic] me to think it over befor [sic] taking any decision,” he confirmed, and explained Shearman had assured him that he was doing everything in his power to get him into a staff position the following spring. He concluded, ambivalently, “and here I am waiting.”76

Kelly, who had not been in Baghdad for nearly three years, continued a personal investment in the film unit and the well-being of his Iraqi counterparts. He also kept faith that Shearman’s advocacy would yield results for Saleh and the others. In a subsequent undated letter Saleh mentioned that he eventually received a small daily raise of 30 Fils, nudging Kelly, “you must say to me congratulations for that.”77 In his last letter to Kelly before the July Revolution, Saleh continued to write with enthusiasm and warmth about the activities of the film unit and his camerawork on various film projects. The correspondences between Kelly and the Iraqi members of the IPC film unit reveal their ongoing passion for the work and attachment to their comrades within the unit, even under conditions of unfair compensation, illustrating the tensions between loyalty and self-advocacy that Iraqi employees navigated within the creative domain of oil company productions.

REVOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION

On July 14, 1958, a faction of the Iraqi military that identified itself as the Free Officers carried out a swift and successful coup to abolish the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq. The revolution was overwhelmingly supported by middle-class and working-class Iraqis, who had repeatedly demonstrated against the regime’s dogged protection of wealthy landholders and British economic interests in Iraq. As the historian Hanna Batatu writes, “the moods of revolt did not arise in a sudden manner or from a single event, but accumulated slowly and gradually” from the late 1930s on. Workers and lower-middle-class Iraqis were sick of seeing their standard of living plummet while wealth poured into the pockets of the elite and the coffers of the oil companies. Al-Wathba of 1948 and the uprisings that came before and afterwards signaled a deep and widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. The majority of young men serving in the conscription-based Iraqi army ranks came from poor and middle-class backgrounds and aligned with the broader national sentiment.78

Iraqi opposition to the regime continued to increase as the government strengthened its alliances with Western political interests, including Zionism, following Nuri al-Said’s sponsorship of the Baghdad Pact in 1955. In the meantime, Egypt continued to push against Western imperialism, exemplified by Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in the summer of 1956.79 When Britain and France joined Israel’s invasion of Egypt in a misguided attempt to regain control and the Iraqi government supported the invaders, the Free Officers’ outrage—and ranks—grew. According to Hanna Batatu, by 1958 the Free Officers had “become settled in the conviction that an irreconcilable conflict existed between the monarchy and the needs of Iraq—or, more accurately, their conception of these needs—and now simply waited for the opportune moment to strike their blow.”80

In the hours before daybreak on July 14, 1958, Free Officers army brigades led by General ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel ‘Abd al-Salam ‘Arif marched into Baghdad and occupied critical positions across the capital, including the royal palace, the Ministry of Defense, and the radio station. The coup was met with almost no resistance; yet the fervor of a minority of officers led to the execution rather than capture of members of the royal family, including King Faisal II and the crown prince ‘Abd al-Ilah, as well as Prime Minster al-Sa’id. By 6:30 a.m., Iraq’s radio airwaves had broadcast the Free Officers’ first proclamation declaring the successful overthrow of the monarchy and establishment of the Republic of Iraq. Within hours, people had flooded the streets of Baghdad in support of the revolution—including members of the Iraqi Communist Party, “nationalists of all hues,” and the city’s most impoverished residents. The army declared martial law and “after nightfall, the crowds ebbed back, the statue of Faisal, the symbol of the monarchy, lay shattered, and the figure of General Maude, the British conqueror of Baghdad, rested in the dust outside the burning old British Chancellery.” In Baghdad, at least one hundred thousand people took part in the day of revolution.81 In Kirkuk, the heart of IPC operations, the reaction in the streets was relatively muted, but support across the city was nonetheless enthusiastic.82

The 1958 revolution ultimately succeeded in, as Batatu puts it, “upsetting the old power structure and old class configuration” and ultimately uplifted the working, middle, and lower-middle classes as well as peasants who benefited from land redistribution and regulation changes affecting the countryside.83 Qasim assumed power as the country’s first president of the republic, and swiftly pursued an agenda of economic development informed by socialist principles. Within the year, he established the Agrarian Reform Law that redistributed the landholdings of rural landlords (a foundation of Hashemite political power) as twenty-to-forty-acre parcels to impoverished and landless Iraqis.84 The reforms, together with investments in public housing and literacy programs, earned Iraq’s new president a wide base of popular support, in particular among fellahin (rural peasants) and urban migrant communities who had been systematically disadvantaged under the previous regime’s punishing economic policies favoring elite landlords. At the same time, Qasim took measures to distance himself from the Iraqi Communist Party and “take the wind out of [its] sails,” Batatu explains, to prevent it from further consolidating its influence throughout the country.85

In order to fund his development agenda, Qasim remained dependent on the IPC for 60 percent of government revenue, and his development plans demanded still greater income from oil, by far the country’s most profitable export. And so, Qasim announced a unilateral toll increase on oil exports from Iraq, adjusting the numbers to be on par with regional averages.86 Perceiving the move as a threat to the parent companies’ global dominance of oil markets, the IPC responded punitively, drastically decreasing oil production in southern Iraq. On top of this, in order to further undermine Qasim’s new taxation rate and send a message, Exxon (a shareholding company) made the drastic decision to reduce the posted price of oil by 7 percent, impacting its operations from the Middle East to Venezuela and causing a controversy within the industry. Qasim hosted a conference in Baghdad with representatives from Iran, Venezuela, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in 1960 to collectively deal with the issue of price manipulation. Fed up with the foreign oil companies’ ability to dictate the economic terms of sovereign governments, the countries decided to establish the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), giving them collective power to leverage their shared interests against the coercive maneuvers of the major European and U.S. companies operating in their borders.87 But the status of Qasim’s negotiations with IPC remained unresolved.

Even as major oil companies began responding to pressure from some OPEC countries and relinquishing undeveloped concessionary areas, Iraq remained an exception. According to the 1925 agreement, the IPC sat on exclusive rights to exploration and extraction of oil within Iraq’s borders; however, the company had only three active fields: Kirkuk, Ain Zalah, and Zubair. In the summer of 1961, Qasim declared that the IPC must immediately relinquish 75–90 percent of the concessionary area.88 The IPC abruptly rebuffed his demands, the final straw before Qasim terminated negotiations. On December 11, he announced Public Law 80, which nullified the 1925 concession. While Law 80 maintained the IPC’s right to export oil from already productive fields, it reclaimed 99.5 percent of the areas in the existing concession and land rights to oil development in Iraq under national jurisdiction.89 In short, Law 80 permitted the oil company to continue existing operations but prevented the possibility of expansion.

This move significantly undermined what remained of Britain’s imperial control over Iraq’s economic affairs and initiated the IPC’s withdrawal of its long-standing policy of political pacification.90 According to historian Arbella Bet-Shlimon, “in the absence of a government amenable to its interests, the oil company saw no need to continue its 1940s- and 1950s-era policy of cooperating with the local and national authorities to leverage its influence. The death of the collaborative, and mutually manipulative, relationship between the IPC and the government through development projects signaled the inexorable decline of the British position in revolutionary Iraq.”91

Concomitant with this decline came the dissolution of the IPC’s public relations activities and film operations in Iraq—a dissolution that had been set into motion in the immediate aftermath of the revolution.92 While the previous regime had relied on a working relationship with the oil company to produce films, magazines, brochures, and reports that favorably represented Iraq among international audiences as a modern developing nation-state, by 1959 the Ministry of Culture sought to establish in-house facilities and expertise to control the public image and information related to Iraq and the new regime. The government began by making use of films the IPC had already sponsored and produced, deeming them useful to its own objectives of projecting images of modern Iraq to global audiences. Moreover, the IPC film unit was substantially restructured and eventually absorbed into the Ministry. In the words of one of the unit’s last remaining Iraqi staff members, Kadhim al-Etri, this essentially “nationalized” what remained of the IPC film unit.93

After Qasim assumed the presidency, John Shearman’s close ties to the old regime compromised his status in Iraq, and so he was removed from his post in the film unit. The IPC replaced Shearman with a new face, Jim Davidson, also hailing from Britain. In a December 1958 letter to Peter Kelly, Abdul Latif Saleh wrote that the film unit had been “paralyzed,” but also described a broader sense of optimism in the aftermath of the revolution: “We hope to continue but on an entirly [sic] different bases [sic]. There will be no goddam [sic] second class and SUPER RACE class. Human beings are all the same. Nobody is born all-knowing.” That phony hierarchy, Saleh made clear, was part of what it meant to work under British hegemony: “Our technical adviser, Jim Davidson,—‘Granny,’ we call him, is a truly super race class and all-knowing. I reckon he has don [sic] more mighty masterpieces than Simon . . . . . . . God have mercy on the Film Unit.” But with production ground to a halt, most of the Iraqi staff took on other gigs. “Any way [sic] we are making some mony [sic] from different sources, Majid is shooting as director of photography on a feature, historec [sic], colored film, Shaikh Mohd. Shukri is editting [sic] the same film, I am shooting as director of photography on a feature film called The Word of Generation, for Sumer Cinema Co. I am shooting at the same time a doucmentary [sic] film dealing with our revalution [sic] for the same company, besides I have a shooting relation with United Press International.”94

By 1959 the unit was nonoperational in terms of new productions, and the company dispersed its Iraqi staff into clerical positions in different departments over the subsequent year. Saleh was transferred to the engineering department as a filing clerk while other members ended up in the telegram office, statistics department, and general office. While some film unit members chose to stay with the company, even if occupying roles unrelated to filmmaking, several resigned. Karim Mejid departed for a position with Baghdad TV, and Andrews resigned to take a management job in a different industry. After resigning, Andrews wrote to Kelly to notify him of the status of the film unit. Extremely dissatisfied with his failed negotiations for a promotion, Andrews admitted, “I am very glad that I did [resign] but regret the six years I threw away during my work with the Company.”95 This bitter note in Andrews’s final letter signals not only his personal disillusionment with his time at the oil company, but also the underlying limitations of the unit’s claims to have nurtured Iraq’s next generation of filmmakers. While the film unit facilitated the accumulation of equipment, training, and opportunities as an infrastructure for emerging filmmakers, the foreign company stopped short of valuing its Iraqi trainees, who were (as the letters to Kelly reveal) underpaid, overworked and, moreover, felt undervalued by the IPC during their time working there.

Even after the IPC film unit ceased film production and terminated its filmmaker training program in Baghdad, the oil company continued to use film for strategic purposes as it navigated the new conditions of its relationship with the revolutionary regime under President Qasim. According to the IPC’s 1966 memo on the company’s public relations, upon assuming power, the new regime had asserted “that it was the job of the Iraq Government to decide what it wanted to publicise and how such publicity should be conducted.” Qasim’s regime quickly formed a relationship with the IPC film unit under conditions that directly served government interests. The memo notes that from 1958 to 1959, as “endless economic and cultural delegations, particularly from Communist countries, poured into Baghdad,” the government regularly screened IPC films for its guests and offered them copies of the company magazines Iraq Petroleum and Ahl al-Naft (People of Oil) in order to “illustrate the progress of Iraq.”96

Thus, the IPC film unit was reconstituted at this point with a new purpose: to re-edit its existing collection of films, removing any appearance or mention of the Hashemite regime so that their usefulness could be transitioned to the Qasim regime. The unit maintained a small staff: Kadhim al-Etri, as editor, and Khajik Misaq, as projectionist, worked under Davidson’s supervision. In al-Etri’s recollection, “What happened was, there were a lot of movies, and these copies included scenes or snippets of old characters, I mean from the monarchy.” He continues, “they wanted me to remove all the unwanted scenes. Of course, there was a demand for accuracy in removing these unwanted snippets so that the audience or viewer wouldn’t be able to tell that anything was removed,” which from a postproduction standpoint presented various technical challenges when it came to syncing existing soundtracks with recut footage.97 Misaq served as the unit’s in-house projectionist, screening the original films for al-Etri so that he could make determinations about which segments should be removed or recut, and screened again for approval after they were recut.98

During this time, the IPC reduced the staff in its Baghdad and London public relations offices to a bare minimum.99 In this atmosphere, al-Etri was contacted by the director of Baghdad Television, Yousef Gerges Hamad, who invited him to produce a documentary newsreel series for television. In a 2010 interview, al-Etri recounts that he accepted the offer and formed a small independent film company with Hamad that utilized the IPC’s film editing equipment (with permission from the company) to make newsreel films chronicling activities of the Republican government—including Qasim’s speeches, Army Day, Women’s Day, Labor Day, and trials of former officials of the Hashemite regime—for Iraqi audiences. The newsreels were aired on television and screened in cinemas in areas of the country where television was not yet widely available. The small unit included al-Etri (editor), Majed Kamel (cinematographer, and former member of the IPC film unit), Daoud al-Samarrai (sound engineer), Hafez al-Qabbani (broadcaster), and Hamad (artistic supervisor).100

The Iraqi artist Youssef al-Ani advised the small independent unit to present two of its films—one newsreel and one documentary—to President Qasim and Minister of Guidance Faisal al-Samer.101 While a precise timeline of events remains unclear from the al-Etri’s recollections, soon after, the regime absorbed the small independent film company into government operations under the artistic supervision of al-Ani. The new government film unit was relocated to an office on Abu Nawaz Street. According to al-Etri, this was the same space formerly occupied by the USIS, which had been shuttered and “abandoned” after the revolution yet still housed equipment—including cameras, sound equipment, and a lab to develop black-and-white film—which the Iraqi government paid 50,000 ID to acquire from the USIS. In 1959, under the administration of the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance, the film unit was formally incorporated as the General Organization of Cinema and Theater (GOCT). At this point, al-Etri officially resigned from the IPC film unit. The IPC officially dissolved the unit and, according to al-Etri, transferred most of its equipment to the GOCT.102

As the first official state-funded film unit in Iraq, the GOCT continued to produce newsreels and documentaries that publicized the activities of the Republican regime and quickly became a central hub for Iraqi filmmakers.103 A number of other former Iraqi members of the IPC film unit contributed to the establishment and operations of the GOCT, including Majid Kamel, who had joined the Iraqi Communist Party after the revolution and had worked as cinematographer on films directed by his colleagues from the IPC film unit, Yahyeh Faiq and Muhammad Shukri Jameel.104 He also oversaw the cinematic culture section of New Iraq magazine.105 Iraq’s political landscape, however, did not remain stable. Another regime change in 1963 created unsafe and uncertain conditions for Iraqis affiliated with the Communist Party. Kamel, as one example, left Iraq for Germany to find stable work in television.106

Carefully watching the fomentation of internal political divisions within Iraq, the United States and Britain tacitly supported the designs of a group of nationalist and Ba‘thist military officers to carry out a coup to permanently remove Qasim from power and decimate the Iraqi Communist Party.107 On February 8, 1963, Ba‘th operatives succeeded in violently toppling the regime, coordinating ground attacks by gunmen and rebel tanks with an aerial bombardment by rogue air force pilots on Qasim’s headquarters in the Ministry of Defense. The coup resulted in brutal executions of the president and other top government officials.108 Operatives seized control of media channels to inform Iraqis of Qasim’s demise, announcing the 14 Ramadan Revolution on Baghdad Radio and broadcasting bloody images of the deceased on Baghdad Television.109 Backed by a nationalist and Ba‘th coalition, a new regime was established in Iraq under President ‘Abd al-Salam ‘Arif.

In the aftermath of this tumult, the IPC—still hoping to maintain a foothold for its public relations efforts in Iraq—produced the film Oil Terminal at Khor-al-Amaya, which according to internal company records was a documentary about company operations released in 1964.110 The IPC had dissolved its film unit well before the making of this film, and so the company had presumably hired foreign filmmakers to execute the project. Indeed, the closing of the film unit did not immediately put an end to the oil company’s ambitions for film activity in Iraq. In an internal IPC correspondence in November 1965, the public relations consultant Julius Edwardes pitched the idea to the IPC’s then chief public relations officer, Richard (“Dick”) E. R. Bird, for the IPC to make a new film “in cooperation” with Iraq’s Oil Ministry. He briefly outlined the concept for a short color 16mm film titled “The Oil Industry of Iraq” and proposed hiring two London-based filmmakers with ties to Film Centre and experience with IPC prestige films: John Armstrong as writer and director, and John Yates as cinematographer.111 Sinclair Road, another consultant and long-standing Film Centre employee, chimed in on Edwardes’s idea for a film.112 In a correspondence sent days later to Bird as a follow-up to Edwardes’s message, Road pointed out that the IPC’s existing relationships with members of the GOCT film unit could work to the company’s benefit. Emphasizing the oil company’s dependence “on the goodwill of the Government” and suggesting that they proceed accordingly, Road wrote,

I think that J. B. E. has a point when he suggests that one might consider a joint film made with the Government. In practical terms, this would be fairly simple to realise, particularly since nearly all the staff of the Government Film Unit were trained by us and are ex I.P.C. employees who I feel sure would welcome such a project. However, I agree with your comment that the subject matter of such a film needs a lot more thought and elaboration.113

Edwardes and Road’s suggestions that a new film should be pursued in cooperation and collaboration with the appropriate government units demonstrates public relations officials’ attunement to the political sensitivities of any future filmmaking endeavors sponsored by the oil company. Ultimately, despite their thoughtful maneuvering, there is no further record of the planning or production of such a film, or any other film for the duration of its existence.

The IPC stopped making films after 1964, but its public relations office remained an active film distributor. The IPC acquired film titles produced by its shareholding companies, including Shell and BP, screening films for its employees, pushing films as filler for television broadcasts, and regularly loaning out films for exhibition. Public relations officials noted that high demand existed for such films from various agencies, including Iraq’s Ministry of Oil, Ministry of Education, and its embassies in England, the United States, Belgium, Iran, and China.114

By this point, the IPC had stopped publication of its two widely distributed magazines Iraq Petroleum and Ahl al-Naft.115 The IPC public relations office maintained a significantly scaled-back “employee communications programme,” which included annual reports, company calendars, and two monthly publications for distribution to the company’s staff, the English-language newsletter, The Crescent, and a new Arabic-language magazine titled Amiloon fil Naft (Workers of Oil).116 Jabra Ibrahim Jabra—by then the longest-standing contributor to the IPC’s Arabic-language productions in film and print—was at the helm of the publication as supervisory editor.117 In stark contrast to the IPC’s prerevolutionary public relations approach, it took a hands-off approach to the publication—a symptom of Britain’s diminishing influence in Iraq. During the magazine’s decade-long run, Jabra and his Iraqi contributors exercised a substantial degree of autonomy that allowed them to address timely regional issues of anticolonialism, self- determination, and Arabism.118

Under Jabra’s editorial guidance, Amiloon fil Naft focused the magazine largely around topics of modern art, archaeology, architecture, and literature in Iraq and the region.119 Cover images cataloged the work of Iraqi visual artists, and the magazine frequently published interviews with artists.120 While the magazine’s circulation was modest in comparison with that of its predecessors, it nonetheless reached an influential readership base throughout the region. Each month, some six thousand copies were distributed to company employees, and two thousand more to government ministries and educational institutions.121

The dissolution of the IPC film unit and its reconstitution under the GOCT was part of the trend towards nationalization across Iraq’s oil industry after the fall of the Hashemite monarchy. In 1968, the Ba‘th Party staged yet another military coup in Iraq, this time consolidating its rule under the leadership of President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr.122 In 1972, as a centerpiece of its political agenda, the Ba‘th government formally nationalized the oil industry through a contentious negotiation process that ultimately terminated the IPC’s existence in Iraq.123 However, the end of the IPC’s neocolonial presence in Iraq was couched within the rise of authoritarianism. The Ba‘th’s party-centered regime was increasingly ruthless with detractors and ethnic minorities, and, as Bet-Shlimon puts it, this “eventually gave way to a more explicit logic of ethnic cleansing, or ‘Arabization’” in northern Iraq.124

In the immediate aftermath of nationalization, the GOCT significantly stepped up its operations, hiring Egyptian filmmakers as well as supporting new productions by Iraqi directors, many of whom had been part of the IPC film unit or trained abroad.125 According to film historian Shakir Nouri, in 1972 alone the GOCT produced twenty-three original short 35mm films.126 Abdul Latif Saleh and Victor Haddad, formerly of the IPC film unit, joined the GOCT and received numerous cinematography and directing credits. After a brief time in London, Muhammad Shukri Jameel returned to Baghdad, editing and directing GOCT films, including Al Dami’un (1972).127 His award-winning film Al Aswar (The Walls, 1979) was a political drama set in the 1950s, which expressed Jamil’s distinctive style of blending newsreels and fiction—an aesthetic influenced by his years with the IPC film unit.128 Jamil continued to focus on political themes in the high- profile narrative Al Mas’ala al-Kubra (Clash of Loyalties, 1983) about the Iraqi resistance to the British occupation in the 1920s.129 Over the course of his career, Jamil attained a reputation in Iraq as one of the country’s most prolific filmmakers.

REPRISE: REGIME CHANGE AND OIL FILMS IN IRAN AFTER 1951

Iran had led the way in nationalizing its oil industry in 1951 as a legitimate response to neocolonial domination over the country’s resources. Yet, little more than a year after the British oil company was expelled from Khuzestan, the power and momentum of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh—the man responsible for carrying out oil nationalization in response to the groundswell of worker-led uprisings—was swiftly overturned by political subterfuge. Oil nationalization had delivered a catastrophic blow to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and, moreover, unsettled Britain’s firm grip on oil production in the Arabian Gulf (see chapter 1). After Mossadegh declined Britain’s request for further negotiations on the matter of oil nationalization, Winston Churchill punished Iran with economic sanctions and initiated plans for a coup to overthrow Mossadegh.

While the oil majors moved to boycott Iranian oil by increasing production in Kuwait and elsewhere in the region, Churchill asked the United States for help ousting Mossadegh.130 In 1953, the newly inaugurated U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower obliged, so that by August the CIA and MI-6 jointly carried out Operation Ajax to depose Mossadegh and reinstate the rule of Iran’s pro-Western monarchy under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.131 The next year, a consortium of foreign oil companies, including British Petroleum (formerly Anglo-Iranian), Shell, Compagnie Francaise des Petroles, and the American oil majors (Exxon, Mobil, Standard Oil of California, Texaco, and Gulf) reached an agreement with the recently formed National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and resumed foreign control over oil production in Iran.

After the coup, Arthur Elton proposed that the consortium and NIOC resume oil company film activities that would build directly upon lessons from successes and shortcomings of the IPC’s experience in Iraq. Elton’s proposal came in response to the consortium’s invitation, in October 1957, to produce “a complete survey, covering all the aspects of the utilization of films as a means of achieving Public Relations aims” in Iran. The following February, Elton arrived in Iran, visiting agencies and facilities in the operating areas in Khuzestan as well as various offices and organizations in Tehran, including the Ministry of Health, the Fine Arts Commission, the British Council, the USIS, and film processing agencies.132 Following his visit, Elton delivered an exhaustive thirty-six-page report with sixty recommendations detailing the advantages and limitations of film use by the consortium and NIOC (which he treated together as a single entity), and an assessment of the potential for public relations in television and print magazines.133

Elton determined six objectives that should underlie oil company film use in Iran: (1) to address the basic questions “What is oil?” and how it is extracted and used; (2) to promote a sense of belonging among employees and residents in Khuzestan, especially in the “fields” and Abadan; (3) to cultivate an implicit connection between the material reality of petroleum infrastructure and the national economy, so that, for example, a pipeline “is not merely one more piece of pipe snaking its way across the Bakhtiari Mountains [but] leads to a new industry destined to change ways of living from one end of the country to the other”; (4) to convey how national profits from oil extraction transform the country, “enabling rivers to be dammed and floods controlled, agriculture revived and extended, industry promoted and energy created to lessen the remorseless toll of manual drudgery”; (5) to make known the indirect benefits of knowledge transfer from foreign experts training Iranian engineers, administrators, and artisans; and (6) to appreciate the role of oil companies in “raising local standards of living, health, education and communications.”134

Many of Elton’s recommendations were informed by his perceived success with establishing the IPC’s film unit in Iraq and the Shell film unit in Venezuela. In particular, Beladuna was evidently a model for the cine-magazine that Elton proposed to the consortium in Iran, which he described as “related in some way, however remote, to the oil operations,” and “entertaining” and in which “every opportunity should be taken to present the growth and progress of the country as a whole.” He also referenced the IPC’s sponsorship of prestige films, naming The Rivers of Time, a documentary released in 1957 “on the history of Iraq.” He recommended that the consortium produce its own color film, which he framed as “The Story of Iran,” that would present a narrative “naturally” leading from “the archeological remains in Iran,” “her architecture and rock carvings,” “mosques and palaces of Shah Abbas,” “manuscripts and miniatures,” “textures of her carpets,” “decoration of her bowls and jars,” and “roads and bridges of Alexander” to “the most recent phases of engineering.”135 Above all, Elton emphasized the importance of distancing the foreign company from the voice and content of the films.

If this is done imaginatively and from the point of view of the people of Iran themselves (and not from that of the film technicians introduced from overseas), the effect will be gradually to create a favourable attitude towards the oil industry as a whole, and to make the Operating Companies seem a more natural and useful part of the economy of Iran than many people are at present prepared to allow. Irrational, emotional attitudes will be damped down and criticism directed into informed and constructive channels.136

Elton had delivered the report several months in advance of Iraq’s 1958 revolution.

A major component of Elton’s report was his advocacy in favor of creating a company film unit using existing talent in Iran, rather than following the training model attempted in Iraq. In fact, Elton explicitly advised against bringing foreign staff on board to set up a unit.137 Elton warned that if the company were to go the way of contracting outside filmmakers, “it will be easy—fatally easy—to obtain glossy, empty films which [. . .] may well provoke hostile attitudes.” Rather, Elton recommended a partnership with an independent film company from Iran. His report argued that “none of the groups claiming to produce films can supply the particular creative talent required for a workmanlike and imaginative program of documentary films,” and so “it will be necessary to help into existence a new Film Unit, adopted and organised specially for this type of work.”138 He nominated Ebrahim Golestan as the ideal candidate for the job of heading an independent film unit with an exclusive contract to make films for the consortium.

Golestan was an established writer, photographer, and filmmaker who had been working on staff with the AIOC prior to oil nationalization.139 After nationalization he continued to work with the NIOC and, following the 1953 coup, worked simultaneously for the company and as a freelance cinematographer and photographer for foreign news agencies, realizing that he could earn more as a freelancer than he made from his income on staff at the oil company.140 In 1957, Golestan sent one of his films, Az Ghatreh Ta Darya (From Drop to Sea), to Shell’s lab in London, where it was seen by Elton. Impressed, Elton met with Golestan during his visit to Iran and later helped to arrange his departure from the staff position at the NIOC for a job with greater compensation, heading an independent film unit that was exclusively contracted by the oil company: the Golestan Film Workshop (GFW).

Elton brokered an agreement for the NIOC to provide an up-front investment in the film unit, purchasing new equipment imported from Germany and Britain. According to Golestan, his agreement with the company stipulated that they would provide the film equipment with the expectation that he would pay back the cost within three years and on the condition that he would not use the equipment for any other jobs until he was able to complete these payments in full.141 Thereafter, the GFW was to be free to make films for the consortium and NIOC as well as other clients and himself. And thus, as film historian Hamid Naficy put it, Iran’s “first independent nonfiction film studio” was born. The GFW produced and sponsored independent documentaries, and later fiction films, and also dubbed educational and technical films. Naficy describes Golestan as “a one-man band, a multifunctional auteur involved in the majority of the productions” and whose authorial vision determined the signature style of the documentaries produced by the GFW.142 Thus, while Iraqi contributors to the IPC film unit, such as the established filmmakers Yahyeh Faiq and Kerim Mejid, were able to pursue film projects independently from their work for the company, the GFW, as a differently conceived oil company–sponsored unit, could exercise the freedom to execute every film it produced—whether for the oil company or otherwise—according to the creative vision of Golestan and his team.

Following the establishment of Qasim’s government, Elton recommended the transfer of John Shearman from his position as director of the IPC film unit in Baghdad to a new post as chief film advisor to the oil consortium in Iran.143 By this time, the movement of films and film officers between Iraq and Iran had become commonplace, especially in the operations of the USIS.144 In a 1987 interview, Shearman bluntly described the new position as “rather a bum job,” which differed drastically from his work in Iraq. He elaborated,

The oil companies there had been persuaded they might need some films and I was posted there as films advisor to the oil companies. Well, they didn’t really want any films, they had two perfectly competent, well-established Persian filmmakers, talented people who were absolutely capable of making films the oil companies wanted and absolutely no one wanted any advice. So it was a bum job.145

Shearman’s comments illuminate a fundamental shift in the reality of oil company film use in Iran after the lessons of oil nationalization in 1951 and Iraq’s 1958 Revolution took effect: the empowerment and proper compensation of local talent rendered the role of the foreign film advisor obsolete.

From 1958 to 1962, the GFW produced Cheshmandāz (A Vista), a six-part documentary series (or cine-magazine). Golestan worked with the cinematographer Shāhrokh Golestān (his brother), the editor Forugh Farokhzād (a renowned feminist poet), Mahmud Hangvāl, and Soleimān Mināsiān. The consortium commissioned documentaries about various aspects of the oil industry, and Golestan has insisted that the films he made during this period were according to his own vision rather than dictated by the sponsor: “I got the money from them but if you watch the whole film, it is clear that nobody else’s thought is behind it. This film has no relation with any other films that the oil companies across the world have made.”146 Naficy describes Golestan’s style as “poetic realism” that “subverted the official style of the documentary and its direct, propagandistic force by various lyrical and symbolic uses of indirection, by contrapuntal strategies of sounds and image editing, and by poetic narration.” In this regard, Golestan’s filmmaking was “often at odds and even critical of the basic ideology of its chief sponsors” and thus transcended the classification of industrially or state-sponsored films as propaganda.147

The human, social, and ecological context of oil industrialization was always present in the documentaries Golestan made for the oil company. Certainly, his films were the first to foreground the impact of the oil industry on the everyday lives of people living in its shadow and, as cultural theorist Negar Mottahedeh has written, the first to use the sounds of local, quotidian voices captured on location in Iran.148 Yek Atash (A Fire, 1958–61) chronicles an effort over seventy days to extinguish a massive oil-well fire near Ahvaz intercut with the lives of residents in the surrounding rural area impacted by the encroachment of the oil industry.149 Other films examine perspectives on conditions of the oil industry, from extreme heat conditions in Abadan to the circumstances of workers in the oil fields of Khuzestan.150 The GFW’s Mowj o Marjān o Khārā (Wave, Coral, and Rock, 1958–61) documents the construction of an oil pipeline from Iran’s interior to the Persian Gulf. Even in this straight industry film, the early sequences offer a submerged perspective below the water’s surface and a subversive critique of the destructive impact of the oil industry on the underwater ecology of coral reefs.151 In the context of Golestan’s career, Wave, Coral, and Rock is widely considered to be a significant artistic achievement that embodies his distinct lyrical style, but not without controversy, as Hamid Dabashi stresses.152 “A poetic joy to watch and listen to,” Dabashi maintains, the oil sponsored film should also be recognized “as an over-aestheticization and simultaneous de-politicization of the neocolonial robbery of Iranian oil by a corrupt monarchy and a conglomerate of transnational oil companies.”153

At the same time, the GFW intentionally did not always perform according to the expectations of its fiscal sponsors. Golestan recalls that conflict with the consortium came about, for example, whenever they argued they were not visible enough in the films as a sponsor. They even objected to Golestan’s decision to enter Wave, Coral, and Rock in the Venice Film Festival, where he ultimately received an award.154 Eventually, the filmmaker leveraged his success to provide monetary support to other artists. In 1963, Golestan produced the documentary The House Is Black by Farokhzād, with whom he was also romantically involved. Personal tragedy ultimately cut short Golestan’s prolific career in Iran. Four years after Farokhzād’s film came out, she died in a tragic car accident. While grieving, Golestan left Iran, eventually sold his studio, and settled permanently in Britain.155

A testament to Golestan’s creative labor and Elton’s determination to continually navigate political circumstances so that oil companies would remain invested in film use, the GFW exemplified the extent of artistic freedom that was possible for local filmmakers under the constraints of oil sponsorship. As a cultural worker embedded in the oil industry, Golestan’s filmmaking during this period demonstrated the tensions inherent within his various roles. He was an independent artist and critic of the monarchic regime, and also a contracted laborer who was obliged to serve his sponsors. In the scope of neocolonial power struggles to maintain control over oil in Iran and Iraq, oil’s many cultural workers navigated these tensions between political conviction, personal aspiration, and financial precarity differently and according to their own needs. While one IPC film unit trainee, Andrews, abandoned the career altogether with a sense of resentment for his wasted years working for oil, another trainee, Saleh, transitioned from his underpaid work in service of a neocolonial agenda to a flourishing career in the nationalist government’s film unit. And then other, more established creatives, like Faiq, Jabra, and Golestan, used the steady income from making oil-sponsored films to enable independent projects that were fundamental to their artistic growth. Straddling the ambiguities and contradictions inherent to these positionalities, these workers and their stories reveal the sundry textures of laboring for oil’s cultural productions.

4

Audiences of Oil

Film Exhibition on the Pipeline

Cinema-going was already popular in Baghdad’s vibrant cultural scene when the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) began exhibiting its films in Iraq during the 1950s. By this point, a generation of artists and writers had generated an abundance of creative work and established a diverse intellectual milieu in Iraq—an era that historian Orit Bashkin describes as the country’s “literary and cultural renaissance.” Cinema halls, cafes, bookstores, libraries, and theaters in the capital drew together young intellectuals in Iraq—students, writers, artists, architects, and journalists—to attend and discuss the capital city’s abundance of poetry, prose, films, plays, lectures, art exhibits, and concerts.1 Cinema-going in particular was a favored form of leisure and, as Pelle Olsen has put it, “a battleground for competing visions of class, morality, gender relations, and politics.”2

In just ten years, between 1944 and 1954, the number of cinemas throughout Iraq nearly quadrupled from twenty-seven to over one hundred.3 This reflected the growing popularity of cinema-going as a form of leisure among Iraqis during this period. In 1950, for example, annual attendance was estimated to be 25 million in Iraqi cinemas, or five cinema outings per capita.4 Most of the films were imported, and were typically exhibited in Iraq one to three years after their original release.”5 In terms of sheer number, Hollywood films dominated the market for imported films in Iraq, which also came from Egypt, India, Turkey, Italy, Britain, Germany, and France.6 However, Egyptian films were by far the most popular to reach the theaters, typically receiving the longest runs. At the time, exhibitors assumed that audiences for Hollywood and other non-Arabic-language films were most interested in the action elements and music, and so they did not bother dubbing the films. Thus, especially in cities outside of Baghdad where most people spoke Arabic or Kurdish, and English was less common, action films and westerns from Hollywood were regularly shown, often including orientalist epics like Tarzan and the Slave Girl and Thief of Baghdad.7

In contrast, the landscape of film exhibition in relatively remote areas was dominated by mobile cinema vans operated by the British Council and the U.S. Information Service (USIS).8 This included most of northern Iraq, where the IPC operated its pipeline and associated network of derricks, pump stations, and refineries. These occasional screenings typically featured propaganda films to drum up support for wartime efforts and combat the spread of communism. Throughout Iraq and the wider region, mobile cinema screenings primarily exposed audiences to didactic and paternalistic narratives drawn from a central library of 16mm films without apparent concern for the local context of exhibition.

Simultaneously, as this chapter shows, a circuit of film exhibition was also emerging in the North alongside the network of IPC infrastructure from drilling rigs in Ain Zalah and Kirkuk to the pumping stations at K1, K2, and K3, leading toward the Mediterranean port in Banias, Syria. On the pipeline, oil company film screenings in makeshift exhibition spaces eventually made way for the construction of dedicated cinemas in many of the oil company towns. The pumping stations and refineries that sustained the flow of oil out of Kirkuk doubled as fixed sites for film exhibition where the IPC screened its sponsored documentaries as well as Hollywood and other commercial films for audiences of oil workers. The oil company detailed its exhibition of its films this way in 1953: “[Our] films are being extensively shown with Arabic commentaries in Iraq. At the major cinemas in Baghdad 35mm versions are used, while at the oilfield and at various pumping and maintenance stations along the pipeline the films are being shown to the company’s employees both on 35mm and 16mm. More films will follow.”9 In most places where the IPC operated infrastructure and controlled the movement of petroleum, it also controlled the movement of films exhibited in the area. The oil company screened films to reinforce a sense of community and belonging among its British employees living together in the peripheries of Iraq. The screenings also served alongside other leisure activities to structure the nonworking hours of Iraqi employees with the aim of preventing labor from organizing. Cinema had the potential to discipline the bodies of oil workers to sit in attendance, consuming their thoughts and occupying their time.10

The IPC film unit based in Baghdad made worker training films for some of these same audiences; however, its primary focus was to produce the Arabic cine-magazine Beladuna, a collection of short documentaries about modern Iraq made for Iraqi audiences. Episodes of Beladuna screened in Baghdad’s movie theaters before the feature and in specially arranged screenings at cultural institutions, like Brittanica House and the YWCA, as well as in theaters and makeshift exhibition spaces in and around the IPC’s oil fields, refineries, and pumping stations in northern Iraq. This chapter traces how the oil company circulated films throughout the country and reveals how the realities of Iraq’s linguistic diversity—particularly in the North, where Kurdish was more commonly spoken than Arabic—quickly exposed the limitations of the IPC’s film use and hubristic assumptions that their films wielded influence in shaping the perceptions of audiences along the pipeline.

MAP 1. Iraq Petroleum Company infrastructure and operations showing locations of pumping stations along the pipeline, 1953. Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, University of Texas at Austin.

PROJECTING ON THE PIPELINE

Plans for the IPC’s settlements along its pipeline in northern Iraq developed rapidly during the middle of the twentieth century to include new housing, services, and amenities for a growing population of oil workers. These developments emerged largely in response to demands put forward by striking oil workers, as when the Kirkuk labor strike in 1946 called for company-provided housing or rent allowance. The IPC initially hesitated to heed the striking workers, but the British and Iraqi governments eventually recognized the legitimacy of worker demands for housing. They were also concerned about the Communist Party’s record of success in organizing the IPC workers, and did not want the party to benefit from growing discontent. In 1947, the Iraqi parliament passed Law No. 29, requiring that any company with more than one hundred employees must provide housing, and by the end of the year the IPC had drafted plans for housing settlements for workers in northern Iraq.11

The demand for worker housing escalated rapidly in the wake of the nationalization of the oil industry in Iran in 1951, the subsequent British boycott of Iranian oil, the fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement between Iraq and the IPC, and the completion of the thirty-inch pipeline in 1952. As ever larger numbers of expatriate staff and Iraqi workers found employment at critical nodes of the IPC’s infrastructure network, demands for more housing and services grew. In Kirkuk, for example, the city’s population nearly doubled, from 68,000 in 1947 to 120,000 in 1957. Arbella Bet-Shlimon’s analysis of census records demonstrates that Kirkuk’s population boom during this period was largely driven by the arrival of migrants seeking employment with the oil company.12 While most noncontract (or “uncovenanted”) employees lived in Kirkuk, where the majority of petroleum was being extracted, the IPC employed Iraqis throughout its extractive network of infrastructure, including the Ain Zalah oil field outside of Mosul, the Dora refinery near Baghdad, and four pumping stations on the pipeline to the sea terminal in Banias, Syria. In addition to providing housing, the company structured activities for its employees outside of working hours to occupy their leisure time. The IPC opened social clubs for contracted employees (largely British and American expatriates) and daily and monthly workers (mostly native Iraqis). It also organized sports teams and cinema programs. Oil company towns were thus places where new cinema audiences were created.

The IPC’s first film exhibition space was a “private” four-hundred-seat screening venue in Kirkuk, likely housed in a company building.13 In 1949, the IPC imported nine 16mm projectors for the purpose of exhibiting “primarily commercial films” for workers at nodes of IPC operations.14 Seven pumping stations along the pipeline in Iraq and Syria were equipped with dual units that consisted of two projectors with amplification so that long feature films could be shown continuously. According to a U.S. embassy report on the status of 16mm equipment in Iraq, the IPC had received an open import license from the Iraqi government that permitted the company to bring such materials into the country directly through the pipeline stations rather than through usual market channels.15 Unlike the fixed equipment in 35mm projection, these portable units—with, as Haidee Wasson writes, “their relatively low cost, low-res, low-fi, small size, and clickety clack”—were “widely accessible and highly adaptable” and could be brought into a variety of indoor and outdoor settings as needed, creating exhibitions spaces wherever the projector could be plugged in.16 Oil companies were particularly enthusiastic in their adoption of 16mm film use, and by 1950, Business Screen magazine notes, “practically every oil company of any size [was] an active user of the film medium.”17 In Iraq, as elsewhere, 16mm was used to train and educate workers on workplace safety, etiquette, and protocols, along with providing entertainment.18

Using 16mm equipment gave the IPC control over film distribution outside of major cities and throughout its sprawling operations, from Kirkuk to Banias. These film shows generated new audiences and demand, and established norms for the circulation in company settlements throughout Iraq. They also laid the foundation for construction of cinema houses in the company settlements, beginning in 1953, that would usher in the use of 35mm for theatrical exhibition, making films available to communities on the pipeline in higher resolution and a larger frame.19 Fixed to the machinery of extraction, these cinemas provided more than entertainment. They were places that connected audiences to the worldview of the oil company. Whenever possible, the company wielded its command over the screen to influence how Iraqis viewed the world, their country, the oil industry, and their place in it. Cinema houses guaranteed regular audiences for the IPC films that would typically screen in advance of commercial films, including the cine-magazine that depicted the company as a harbinger of modernity and national progress.

As early as 1950, the IPC was the “chief importer” of Hollywood films in 16mm format.20 While the nontheatrical exhibition format has been most associated with use for educational and business purposes, Hollywood began printing 16mm films exclusively for military use overseas during World War II, and by the late 1940s major studios were issuing dozens of titles in 16mm for wider domestic and international distribution.21 In 1944, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad urged the State Department to recognize Iraq as a cultural battleground where cinema might help America’s geopolitical goals. He cited a report by Twentieth Century Fox that emphasized that, while Arabic, Russian, and Indian films were finding “an ever growing market” in Iraq, “Iraqian [sic] citizens are being deprived of seeing those [American] pictures which are to their advantage to see,” concluding that “Iraq is an important country for the outlet of motion picture films.”22 Whether or not IPC officials agreed with the U.S. ambassador’s position on the necessity of exhibiting Hollywood films in Iraq to the “advantage” of its citizens, the oil company played a significant role in the circulation of Hollywood films to audiences of company employees outside of Baghdad through nontheatrical exhibition in 16mm.

While the oil company established audiences and screening spaces sited along its infrastructure, British and American agencies inside Iraq had developed a contingent infrastructure of mobile film exhibition to distribute anticommunist propaganda to remote regions of the country. During the 1950s, mobile cinema vans operated by the USIS and the British embassy regularly showed anticommunist propaganda films in villages and towns throughout northern and southern Iraq.23 The vans projected films onto a screen with a loudspeaker below, as children, family members, and elders gathered and, Alec Stirling recounts in his memoirs, “packed in to watch, sitting on the ground round the edges,” until “the babble of voices died away as soon as the light was switched off and the show started.”24 The propaganda films presented a black-and-white depiction of Western modernity prevailing over communist villains and, Elizabeth Bishop argues, failed to persuade Iraqi communities of the evils of communism. Locals continued to hold complex political affinities and understood themselves as subject to the outsized power of wealthy landholders in rural areas of the country. On several occasions, mobile cinema van screenings became sites of protest against British and American imperialism. In April 1954, for example, ten young men attacked a British mobile cinema van in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja, where the Iraqi Communist Party was notably active among residents, and were imprisoned as a result. In other towns, residents reportedly hurled stones at the screen and bricks at the vans in coordinated attacks. The tactics succeeded in intimidating the van operators in rural areas. In Bishop’s words, “These were not the passive audiences, to which the Hollywood system had become accustomed.”25 Indeed, as the IPC soon discovered too, Iraqis would not perform as passive audiences for their films. While the oil company was successful in establishing multiple exhibition venues to ensure its films reached audiences across Iraq, the realities of their mixed reception (discussed below) indicated the limits of their impact on viewers.

THEATRICAL EXHIBITION

While cinema vans embraced mobility, the IPC worked to establish a more durable circuit of film distribution—no longer just projecting films for workers on bed sheets hung outside, or inside of staff club buildings, but at dedicated theaters in company towns.26 In the IPC company towns being planned and developed near its fields, pumping stations, and refineries during the 1950s, cinemas were regularly built alongside the housing that Iraqi workers had demanded and demonstrated for in previous years. Cinemas provided daily access to films from around the world and IPC documentaries, occupying workers’ time off the clock.

A cinema—likely open-air—operated in the Ain Zalah oil field, in the northwesterly hills outside Mosul, as early as 1952. It showed two to three films a week for the entertainment of the IPC employees who resided there. Ain Zalah was home to around fifty expatriate British and American staff. The company also employed at least nine hundred Iraqis, recruited from surrounding villages, but many of them preferred to commute daily from their villages in IPC-provided vehicles rather than to live in the company town, which the Petroleum Times described as more of “a camp rather than a residential town.”27 Some 350 Iraqi employees resided in the company town during the week and returned home to Mosul on weekends.28 The company invested in additional social services for residents, including the cinema that showed films two to three times a week, sports fields and courts, swimming pools, and a lending library.29

In Baiji, where the K2 pumping station about 100km west of Kirkuk was located, the company converted an unoccupied store into an inviting two-hundred-seat cinema house fitted for 16mm projection in May 1953. The Deanna Cinema—named after the daughter of the local civil engineer—opened with six weekly screening times, featuring one Arabic and two English-language films. Comprised of a projection room, large auditorium, box office, and foyer, the interior was thoughtfully designed to optimize the cinematic experience. A rich description of the small cinema house, published in Iraq Petroleum, paints a picture of the space: “A low ceiling, paneled in plywood, with thick green drapes and curtains provides excellent acoustics, and a color scheme of cream and fawn gives the interior a bright and airy appearance. The cinema is equipped also with a roomy carpark and strip lighting over the entrance to the foyer. It is without doubt, unique among its kind in the Middle East.”30

Months later, a newly constructed cinema-theatre house opened at the Kirkuk oil field to accommodate the demand for film showings among IPC workers, who had “strained the capacity” of the existing screening venue. The building was located adjacent to a new staff clubhouse, between two main residential areas of company housing. It seated an audience of 302 people and had projection in 35mm and 16mm formats, which provided access to a larger supply of films. In a palette of blue and white, the interior design gave attention to aesthetic as well as acoustical considerations and, according to Iraq Petroleum magazine, boasted “all the refinements of a modern theatre,” including “seat lights, six side exits, and ventilation grilles,” as well as “a comfortably furnished foyer” and a bar in the lounge. The auditorium was designed to double as a cinema and theatre auditorium, with a screen that could be lowered and raised as needed. The building also accommodated theatre productions with its large stage, dressing rooms, and orchestra pit. The project manager, according to Iraq Petroleum, was especially “proud of the fact that his three masons, three carpenters, and 30 laborers have risen so well to the unfamiliar and imposing task of erecting the first proper cinema in the [oil] Fields.”31

Two years later, a cinema was built at the K3 pumping station, located southwest of Baiji and near Haditha on the Euphrates River. The cinema was constructed alongside the expansion of new company offices, police barracks, and general accommodations and amenities for the IPC’s daily and monthly workers, including fifty-six houses and eight blocks of bachelor accommodation, as well as leisure spaces that included a recreation center, swimming pool, mess hall, and the cinema.32 In 1955, a new cinema at the Daura refinery outside of Baghdad was included as part of the IPC’s plans to expand staff and day worker housing and facilities “to take care of workers’ needs during their off-duty hours,” according to the Petroleum Times.33

As of 1950, Kirkuk had three commercially built cinema houses—King Ghazi, Al-Hamra, and Al-Alamen—each with an attached open-air cinema for the summer season—that could seat audiences of seven to nine hundred people.34 By 1953, the IPC had constructed a “modern and excellently equipped” motion picture theatre in Kirkuk to replace its own makeshift facilities.35 The new IPC cinema gave the oil company exclusive control over a theatrical exhibition space that would be a guaranteed outlet for its cine-magazine and films.

Baghdad was the place for IPC film premieres, where the British and Iraqi ruling class—including high-ranking state officials and industry executives—could assemble to celebrate the moving pictures of Iraqi oil modernity. Between 1952 and 1957, the IPC film unit hosted these exclusive events in nontheatrical venues that could be arranged and controlled by the oil company, sometimes in conjunction with Iraqi ministries. Beladuna was first shown in the garden of Sir Herbert Todd, who was the IPC’s highest-ranking representative in Iraq.36 Oil of Iraq premiered in an upscale hotel in the city center.37 Rivers of Time was screened at the Al-Mansour social club and racetrack.38 The premiere of The Third River at King Faisal Hall in December 1952 was attended by an audience of as many as five hundred people, including many of Iraq’s elite class of politicians. The event was sponsored by the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the English-language daily Iraq Times covered it in a way that essentially reproduced the film’s script:

The construction of the 30-inch pipeline, linking Kirkuk with Banias on the Syrian seaboard, was shown in detail with the people who did the job and the kind of work that was done. The new pipeline, the biggest of its kind in the world, is helping step up Iraq’s oil exports on a mounting scale and earning more revenue for the country. The film ends with a survey of new projects in various fields here, made possible through the Government’s increasing oil earnings, which will be a telling factor in raising the standard of living of the population.39

Such coverage was a predictable part of the media cycle for IPC films: the Iraq Times—established in 1914 and, under the Hashemite regime, generally favorable toward the oil company—could be counted on for praise. Related items often appeared in the English-language Iraq Petroleum magazine, but Iraq’s contemporary Arabic-language publications did not regularly cover these same events. The discrepancy suggests that, outside of the immediate sphere of British influence and linguistic hegemony, engagement with the oil company films and cine-magazine was limited.

Around the premieres of its films, the oil company made efforts to program standalone screenings in local venues in Baghdad, such as the British Institute Club and the YWCA, where the films would reach a mix of expatriate British and Iraqi audiences with special interest in the subject matter.40 In major Iraqi cities like Mosul, Basra, and Baghdad, the IPC films were otherwise shown in commercial theaters in advance of feature film attractions, and these were the venues where the average Iraqi had the best chance of encountering them. As in Europe, Iraqi cinemas typically reserved this early programming slot for screening theatrical newsreels—single-reel compilations of several filmed “stories” of newsworthy events from the week.41 The oil company competed for this screen time with the British Pathé and the USIS, the dominant newsreel distributors in Iraq during the 1950s.

The Imperial News of British Pathé reported a broad range of international news headlines, and according to historian Elizabeth Bishop, its coverage that was specific to Iraq “offered a particular view of the country as a source of crude petroleum to fuel Britain’s post-war reconstruction,” with titles in 1952 that included “Iraq’s New Oilfield,” “New Oil Route from Iraq,” “New Oil Wealth for Iraq,” “King Feisal Opens Giant Pipeline,” and “King Feisal Opens Refinery.”42 The IPC, of course, was interested in “crude petroleum” too, but Beladuna diverged from British newsreels in terms of the language of production (Arabic rather than English), the tone and perspective of the narration (an interior perspective on Iraq rather than coming from the outside), and story content (featuring aspects of industrial, agricultural, and urban development that were timely though not packaged as headline news).

By the middle of the decade, the USIS, stepping up its campaign to combat communism in Iraq using film propaganda, posed a challenge to Britain’s long-standing prominence in the Iraqi newsreel market.43 Working under an annual contract of $150,000 with the Iraqi government that supported its activities in the country, the USIS produced a monthly newsreel, described in a U.S. embassy report to be “designed to build up Iraq patriotism as bulwark vs. commie ideological penetration.”44 Each newsreel edition was distributed to forty of Iraq’s theaters.45 As the previous chapter discusses in detail, during this time the USIS made repeated efforts to poach Iraqi staff from the IPC film unit, offering higher salaries to entice them.

The USIS newsreels focused on topics specific to Iraq, including the same development projects and official events—such as government speeches and trade fairs—that the IPC film unit was simultaneously documenting. However, the USIS newsreels and Beladuna differed in several respects. USIS attempts to use film as a way to drum up patriotism among Iraqis were in service of the U.S.-led anticommunist agenda in the region. While the IPC benefited from efforts to stamp out the Iraqi Communist Party’s capacity to organize oil workers in the North, the IPC’s film use was chiefly aimed toward fostering national belonging in Iraq as a means to galvanize favorable views of the oil company and counter its reputation as an imperialist institution. The aesthetic approach of the competitors also differed significantly. While the USIS program conformed to what Bishop calls the “martial, upbeat, and forgettable” music typical of British and American newsreels, Beladuna was well-known in Iraq for its instrumental soundtrack, which was composed and performed by Munir Bashir, the world-renowned Iraqi master of oud.46

The reach of the IPC’s films throughout Iraq cannot be assessed solely through numbers of screenings or the size of audiences. Those who did not see the films for themselves may have read or heard about them from media coverage—albeit in the sympathetic English-language outlets, not Arabic-language papers. And beyond the cinematic encounter, it was common for individuals who went to see a film to recount what they saw for family members, neighbors, and other community members who did not attend. During the 1950s, moviegoing was an extremely popular activity across gender and class in Baghdad. According to Bishop, “government statistics showed that the average middle-class family of seven spent 231 fils at the box office each month, which meant that at least one member saw a film every week.” She notes that, “while impoverished families spent less money on entertainment (46 fils a month) and saw fewer films, the process of telling and re-telling ensured that a film’s messages diffused through sarifa settlements,” which were Baghdad’s impoverished and underserved communities, characterized by auto-constructed mud and reed dwellings.47

Cinema was a widely accessible leisure activity in Iraq because the government fixed admission prices for cinemas with a sliding scale for admission that targeted a range of socioeconomic statuses: 90 fils for a box seat, 70 fils for a first-class seat, 40 fils for a second-class seat, and 25 fils for those serving in the army.48 While only wealthy patrons could afford to enjoy regular film shows, variable pricing made occasional visits to the cinema possible for rural migrants and working-class residents as well. Sharing space did not mean mingling: As Pelle Olsen points out, class integration in cinema environments was limited since theatre architecture generally enforced the spatial segregation of audiences, with higher-paying patrons seated in the balconies and those who purchased cheaper tickets on the ground floor.49 A regular column in the Iraq Times printed a commentary lamenting the vibrant atmosphere of open seating arrangements in outdoor cinemas, which were typical during the summer months:

The open air cinemas are well attended in summer. The air is comparatively cool and one can relax and forget for an hour or two his worries. One could, on the express condition that some categories of human elements are absent in the immediate rear. These are: the debators, the commentators, the hab and pistachio eaters, the leg stretchers and the sneezers on your neck. The worst are, of course, the debators. They lose interest in the picture, and begin to review aloud the events of the day, their own experience, and the merits and flaws of the show. They laugh like jackals when the sequence almost forces you to reach for your handkerchiefs to wipe away the tears [. . .] As to the hab-and-pistachio eaters, why in the name of heavens can’t they ever enjoy a picture without moving their jaws all the time is a mystery. Words also fail us to describe those who cough right on your neck or stretch their legs on the chair next to yours as if they were in their bedrooms. The only possible escape lies in taking a box, but even then, one cannot often evade the unpleasantly disturbing commentaries which simply kill all joy. What is more, the cinema management cannot do a thing about it.50

While framed as a series of complaints, the author’s description paints a picture of the vibrant, social, and multisensorial atmosphere of the outdoor cinema, in which filmgoers could easily be distracted from the on-screen feature, or give their attention over to social interactions, potentially of more interest.

In 1956, the opening of the Khayam Cinema in Baghdad—deemed “Iraq’s first modern motion picture theatre”—introduced a grading system that authorized a new higher pricing scale for admission dependent on the government rating.51 In “first grade” cinemas like the Khayam, the price for a box seat was set at 150 fils, a first-class seat 100 fils, and a second-class seat 60 fils. The Khayam offered four daily film screenings and was considered distinctive among Iraq’s existing theatres because it was uniquely equipped with a wide-angle screen, remote-controlled state curtain, adjustable foam rubber chairs, carpets, four two-hundred-ton air condition/heating units, and simplex OL-7 projectors with stereophonic sound equipment and lenses for Cinemascope, Vista Vision, and Panorama, most of which was supplied by the New York–based National Theater Supply Company.52 The feature films that drew audiences into the Khayyam would also have been imported from abroad. And yet, presumably since it was typical at the time, the main attraction would often be preempted with a screening of a locally made film, a USIS newsreel, or an episode of IPC’s Beladuna.

AUDIENCE REACTIONS

Congregated around cinema screens near the oil fields, pumping stations, and refineries where they worked, IPC workers sat witness to the spectacle of their own labor on screen. The filmmakers intended the moving images, set to catchy musical soundtracks and fast-paced commentary, to guide workers to better understand their place within the big picture of Iraq’s oil industry and national development. However, documented responses to early screenings of the IPC cine-magazine Beladuna indicate that, while the on-screen pictures often impressed audiences, the soundtrack met significant criticism.

Early on, in 1953, the reporter Memdouh Zeki wrote an opinion for the Iraq Times on the first episode of Beladuna, which featured three short pieces on the date harvest in Basra, the construction of a new bridge, and the national airline Iraqi Airways. Zeki praised the film for “the high quality of photography.” Qualifying his assessment, he wrote that

to take good pictures, even if they were “stills,” or “snapshots,” is not easy in Iraq. The climate and the glaring sun (even in winter) creates many problems to the photographer. Too much light is his main worry. For this inundation of light blurs the picture and the subject. The shadows become too heavy, and the subject itself too light. It is hard to keep the balance between the foreground and the background. But the makers of the film, Mr. Sherman, the director and Mr. Peter Kelly, the photographer, overcame these difficulties by using various methods and a string of filters and made a splendid job of it.53

Zeki’s assessment of the sound, however, pointed to some shortcomings.

Incidental music and musical effects are beautifully conceived in the first film of the series “Our Country.” There is a harmonious blend of local, oriental and western music which is original and pleasant to hear. On the other hand, commentary in Arabic can be improved. But, in this pioneering enterprise, this is only natural. One must not forget that there are yet only few documentaries in Arabic, and the script or commentary writing is a new art. The makers of the film are not blind to this problem, and more improvement is on the way.54

Faint criticism aside, it is obvious from the author’s references to Shearman and Kelly—“the makers of the film”—that Zeki’s article was composed in consultation with the film unit, and represents an effort by the oil company to place positive coverage of the film series in a press outlet that was already sympathetic to the IPC.

A few months later, a shorter piece appeared in the same newspaper, reviewing the special Beladuna episode “Melikuna wa Biluduna” (Our King and Our Country), which focused on the life of King Faisal II. Once again, the film direction was largely attributed to Kelly, and, while the review praised the cinematography, it made a pointed critique about the soundtrack: “The shots, taken mostly by Mr. Peter Kelly or under his supervision, are beautiful and clear. The commentary in Arabic is crisp and appreciably better than on the IPC Films previously shown. But it was rather weak in the musical background and sound effects which were mostly in undertones, thereby leaving the spectator with a certain feeling of emptiness.”55 While reviews of the IPC films in the English newspaper are influenced by editorial bias in favor of the IPC and do not offer a fully candid assessment of the films from the perspective of Iraqi audiences, they do indicate attunement to the shortcomings of the commentary and soundtrack.

Documentation from Kelly’s personal record-keeping provides a fuller glimpse into the reception of the IPC films in and around the pipeline. In January 1954, following early screenings in Ain Zalah of the second episode of Beladuna—which featured “A Visit to Ain Zalah Oil Field” as well as items about corn harvesting and a cotton factory—Kelly observed audiences and conducted informal interviews to gauge their reactions to the film. This feedback would inform the film unit as to how local audiences generally responded to the format and content of the cine-magazine, helping them determine what worked and what needed improvement. Kelly’s report summarized the response in Ain Zalah as generally positive among the expatriate staff, oil workers, and tribal Sheikhs from surrounding villages who were invited to the screening. Many expressed interest in seeing more of the Beladuna films. And yet, Kelly recorded significant points of criticism that reveal the limitations of the localized approach taken by the IPC films in Iraq’s linguistic and ethnically diverse cultural landscape.

Audience members noted that the pacing of the commentary and editing should be slower. Many attendees in the largely Kurdish-speaking audience struggled to follow along with the Arabic commentary altogether. Kelly’s comments indicate that this example of linguistic diversity in northern Iraq created an obstacle for the filmmakers that would be “nearly impossible to completely overcome.”56 In his assessment, and based upon a rudimentary understanding of the linguistic context, Kelly noted that in the villages surrounding Ain Zalah “there are a number of different tribes each with its own dialects, some of these being quite incomprehensible to the people speaking other dialects.”57 While the film unit had wanted its use of Arabic to help it reach local audiences, it hadn’t considered that some local audiences did not speak Arabic—and for these viewers, image and score mattered all the more.

Some attendees found the film’s musical selection to be problematic, because a Kurdish harvest song was played over a sequence featuring Arabs harvesting corn. As Kelly wrote in his summary, according to reactions from monthly paid staff, “the music did not suit the place and view of the film as the music of the North is not the same as that of the middle and southern parts of Iraq.”58 This sort of misstep contradicted the film’s inclusive titular claim to be representative of “our country” (beladuna). So did the lack of audible speech from workers in the oil fields, factory, and harvest scenes pictured in the films. The soundtrack was only comprised of music and voiceover commentary, and IPC workers on the pipeline made clear to Kelly that the company had created a depiction of workers for workers in which they could be seen but not heard.

While most of the IPC’s oil workers lived in Mosul and Kirkuk, the audience for IPC films in the cities’ cinema houses was not exclusive to IPC employees. The cities were distinguished from many of Iraq’s other cities by their Kurdish-speaking majority. As was the case during the IPC screening for local workers in Ain Zalah (near Mosul), the exhibition of the Arabic-language cine-magazine in Mosul and Kirkuk also highlighted problems of translation. Furthermore, in the cities, the quality of theatrical exhibition in commercial cinemas was outside the oil company’s control. Technical issues with the sound and projection transformed the encounter with the films in ways the company could not anticipate or control.

In late January of 1954, the main attraction at the Hollywood Cinema in Mosul was Thief of Damascus. Columbia Pictures’ 1952 Technicolor feature was the latest Hollywood film to draw upon folklore from the Arabian Nights epic and stage a pastiche of orientalist tropes on screen—evil sultans, haram girls, Aladdin’s lamp, Ali Baba and his thieves—which, film historian Jack Shaheen has shown, served to reproduce ad nauseum the idea of the Middle East as the cultural “other” to the so-called West.59 As it happened, the film’s exhibition in Mosul was paired with the second episode of Beladuna. The episode of the IPC cine-magazine preceded the feature and offered a black-and-white depiction of industrialized development in modern Iraq, a dramatic contrast to the absurd fantasy world of Thief of Damascus.

Peter Kelly attended the afternoon screening to document audience reactions to the cine-magazine. In his notes, Kelly identified a concern for the problem of audience exclusion of audiences who did not speak Arabic first raised by Kurdish-speaking audiences in Ain Zalah. Kelly’s report catalogs the ways in which Kurdish audience members seated in proximity to him during the screening responded to the film soundtrack. He wrote that, while the audience “generally seemed very interested in the film and to take especial interest in the Ain Zalah item . . . there seemed to be quite a lot of translation going on in the seats around us according to the interpreter who was with me.”60 This encounter made it obvious that the oil company films privileged Arab audiences to the exclusion of Kurdish and other ethnicities in the country.

Kelly also attended a screening of the Beladuna episode at the al Hamra, Mosul’s newest cinema, which preceded a showing of the Technicolor feature Plymouth Adventure, which dramatized the colonialist narrative of Europeans aboard the Mayflower discovering the New World. While they provided an uncanny juxtaposition of storytelling genres, the coupling of IPC documentaries or newsreels about Iraq’s modernization with Hollywood dramas and adventure films rooted in orientalist and colonialist fantasies was relatively common. Kelly noted, “again the audience were very interested in the film and were quite excited about the Ain Zalah item, and a number of Kurds in the audience seemed quite delighted with the Harvest Song.” While his notes do not further qualify the specific behaviors that he qualifies as delight, he does go on to specify, “three Kurds to my right were loving the Harvest Song and two Kurds on my left sat as though there was nothing on the screen at all and didn’t even seem to notice the song or for that matter the film, however they did sit through it and reacted in exactly the same way to the Feature film.”61 Kelly’s notes interpret the spectrum of audience engagement with the film’s soundtrack, ranging from active translation to apparent apathy, although he does not speculate or investigate further the reason for the latter response. This sort of audience involvement was not unique to Beladuna: Accounts of cinema-going in Iraq from the 1950s demonstrate that theaters were rarely a quiet environment and, as film historian Pelle Oslen writes, “noise was an integral part of the cinema experience.”62 Beverage vendors shouted to customers and films competed to be heard over the shouts, laughter, shrieks, quarrels, and exhortations among the audience.63

In addition to describing the audience reception, Kelly provided details about the poor condition of the theaters, writing, “The two cinemas I visited are the two best in Mosul, which rather condemns the rest of the seven out of hand, the projection in the Hamra cinema is awful but in the Hollywood it is execrable.” Specifically, he pointed out the distortions in picture and audio resulting from damaged or sub-par equipment:

At the second best cinema, the Hollywood, Biladuna could hardly be seen for scratches[;] there was so much top in the sound that the (recorded) commentator sounded for all the world like a boy soprano and the screen masking gave the picture a rather delightful scalloped edge, which, though delicately conceived, contributed nothing at all to good presentation. During the feature “Thief of Damascus” the projector refused to give forth light for three separate ten minute periods, but the gallant projectionist not to be deterred let the machines run while he made whatever adjustment was necessary, so that the audience could at least enjoy the sound track. It must be admitted that for the second and third blackouts the projectionist did stop his machines after about four minutes.64

Kelly stresses his perception that theatrical exhibition under these conditions minimizes the effectiveness of the IPC’s purpose as a film sponsor. His report to the oil company recommends an intervention to improve matters, concluding, “It is seriously to be suggested that if we are to get full value out of our films something should be done about projection and presentation in Mosul.”65 However, he does not go so far as to indicate how this “something” could be achieved.

William Subhiyah, a columnist and humorist for the Iraq Times who also wrote regularly featured articles on food and culture in Iraq Petroleum, penned a review following the screening of an early episode of Beladuna at the YWCA in the summer of 1953.66 He wrote:

It is long since I enjoyed a picture as I did that of the date industry, taken, produced and presented by the capable I.P.C. Film Unit. The occasion was a party kindly given by the I.P.C. Representative—in absentia, to the YWCA guests—of course, they were “paying guests”—who left the party well-fed, well-irrigated, well-entertained, and well-obliged. The film of the date industry was a true picture of the actual picking and packing of the dates in Basra. The sound receiver should have registered the true sounds of the workmen and “work-girls” as they talked, sang and worked there. The announcer, with his Egyptian accent, was too romantic and “foreign” to the local color—if you know what I mean. Such records are excellent for education and entertainment of all Iraqi and foreign school-children, as well as for date-consumers wherever they may be. I am certainly looking forward to the next Beladuna picture, even if I have to pay the YWCA’s building fund for seeing it.67

Subhiyah’s tongue-in-cheek sensibility—consistent with his tone in the newspaper’s regular “Brush Up” column—colored the predictable praise of the IPC and film unit. Yet he did not refrain from delivering several explicit points of criticism, most of which echoed sentiments and concerns captured in Kelly’s report on the screening in Ain Zalah. This included the omission of diegetic sounds of workers as they “talked, sang and worked” and the casting of an Egyptian narrator for a film intended for Iraqi audiences.

Alongside Kelly’s reports on audience reactions, Subhiyah’s brief article makes further evident that, whether in the Iraqi capital or on the oil pipeline, audiences of the cine-magazine’s early episodes in Baghdad were sharply attuned to discrepancies between the oil company’s claim to the story of “our country” or Beladuna. While perhaps positively impressed by the undertaking, observers were quick to draw out obvious failures in the oil company’s capacity to attend to the Iraqi audiences they hoped to reach.

OIL CINEMA OVERSEAS

The IPC films also made their way to the IPC headquarters in London and were seen throughout Europe. The oil company introduced a 16mm cinema to its main office building on Oxford Street in 1953 “so that office personnel can learn—from English versions of the Iraq films—what takes place at the oil-producing centers they are never likely to see.”68 Beyond industry audiences, oil company–sponsored films received great interest from groups and institutions organizing nontheatrical screenings. The Petroleum Film Bureau in London distributed IPC films as part of an extensive catalog of oil company sponsored films for nontheatrical exhibition. In 1951, the Petroleum Films Bureau in London sent out prints for 44,095 film programs for showings at British schools, film societies, clubs, and technical institutes. This was an increase of 7,676 from the previous year, indicating the growing popularity and circulation of oil company documentaries that were catalogued as educational or entertainment films.69

FIGURE 36. An advertisement for IPC films in Film User, June 1955, 276.

The English versions of IPC’s prestige documentaries, The Third River (1952) and Ageless Iraq (1954), premiered theatrically in London’s West End.70 These high-profile events were attended by dignitaries and company officials including the Iraqi ambassador, British MPs, and the IPC chairman John Cunningham, joined by various members of the British press. In January 1955, the IPC’s managing director and his wife hosted a film event for four hundred oil industry representatives, diplomats, and members of the press at the Grovesner House. The crowd gathered as an audience for a double feature of an episode of Beladuna in Arabic followed by the English version of Oil of Iraq. The Petroleum Times reported that “the evening, apart from its social pleasures, was remarkable in acquainting those present with something of the progress which the company has been making, since late in 1952, in film operations.”71 These events served the double purpose of giving interested parties a picture of the IPC’s operations in Iraq and (perhaps more importantly) making known the oil company’s cultural operations there.

Iraqis studying in overseas universities took it upon themselves to occasionally organize screenings using the IPC films, often followed by talks with invited speakers. In London, Oxford, Stockholm, and as far as Washington, DC, Iraqi students used the oil company documentaries, which could be loaned by the Petroleum Films Bureau library, to introduce audiences to images of modern Iraq.72 In Sweden, for example, an Iraqi expatriate by the name Dr. Ghazala organized a film event using several of the IPC films—including The Third River, Beladuna, Ageless Iraq, and Oil of Iraq, and beginning in 1955 the “Know Iraq” film program screened nontheatrically for clubs, film societies, schools, and universities around the country.73

The cultural infrastructure of oil produced a circuit of exhibition that accompanied its network of extractive infrastructure. Cinema, like oil, was distributed along the path of the IPC’s pipeline, fixing the geography of film exhibition to oil settlements where oil was drilled, refined, monitored, and transported. Cultural infrastructure served the interests of the oil company, but it could not operate with the precision of machines: The IPC might control what went on screen, but audiences responded with the force of their own knowledge, culture, and beliefs. This was the case with IPC films in Iraq, as it was with the reception of British colonial films in Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Rhodesia, Kenya, and Malaya during the mid-twentieth century, where the Colonial Film Unit’s didactic films were screened for local audiences (often by mobile cinema van) according to meticulously prescribed top-down guidelines. And yet, as numerous historians of colonial film have revealed, local audiences were not necessarily comprised of the passive spectators that colonial officials dreamed of.74 Local screenings of colonial films and oil films so often failed to impart the lessons and messages intended by their creators because people watching the films were more than likely to make sense of them according to their own sensibilities, needs, and precise contexts.

Epilogue

Scrolling through my Facebook feed in summer 2017, I noticed that several people had posted the same story about Iraq to their timelines. I clicked the headline, “Amazing Pictures of Peaceful Iraq,” and a piece published three years earlier on Business Insider opened.1 The article displayed a stream of saturated pictures of mid-twentieth-century Baghdad, like windows onto a vista of modern urban life: cherry red buses on grand boulevards, sprawling green parks behind a bustling café, svelte young swimmers diving into a cerulean pool. The pictures presented a radical contrast to the consistently bleak depictions of death and destruction in Baghdad since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq—not to mention the devastation from compounding wars, corruption, and ecological crises harkening to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the first U.S.-led invasion in 1991, U.N. sanctions, and the U.S. occupation that followed the 2003 invasion.2 The title played up that contrast, with the phrase “Peaceful Iraq” alluding to its opposite—war-ravaged Iraq—and the suggestion that viewers would find it “amazing” that Baghdad ever looked so good. The accompanying article supported this impression: “After the ravages of Saddam Hussein’s decades in power and the chaos that’s taken hold for most of the years after the US invasion in 2003,” it read, “it’s difficult for outsiders to envision the country as a thriving or even functional place, but before its decades of war and totalitarian rule, Iraq was a quickly modernizing country.”3

I recognized these images immediately: they were not actual photographs, but screenshots from the digitized version of an Iraq Petroleum Company film that I had watched, written about, and presented clips from many times as part of the research that led to this book. The original film, Ageless Iraq, released in 1954, is a twenty-one-minute English-language documentary about the social, cultural, and economic landscape of Iraq. Sponsored by the IPC and produced by Film Centre and the Associated British Pathé, Ageless Iraq celebrated the oil industry as a modernizing force in Iraq. Like the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s Persian Story and the IPC’s The Third River, these films held forth the foreign oil company as an agent of postcolonial development and associated it with industrial innovation, infrastructural projects, and social progress, all in service of justifying neocolonial control of oil.

Now, as the Business Insider piece reported, Pathé had posted a digital reproduction of the analog film to YouTube. (The piece’s author, Jeremy Bender, got that part right, but inaccurately described the documentary as “a travel reel that showcased the beauty and diversity of scenery found throughout the country between 1950 and 1959.”)4 As the original images of Ageless Iraq recirculated in this piecemeal form, they acquired a new, but not entirely dissimilar function, as visible evidence of how beautiful and modern Iraq had once been, becoming, as film historian Grazia Ingravalle puts it in her study of British colonial films of India, “staples of a diasporic appropriation and metadiscourse” that challenge colonial binary logics of national domination.5 Ageless Iraq offers another opportunity to trace what Ingravalle calls “films-in-motion,” by observing shifts in the oil film’s cultural meaning as it moves from its analog to digital incarnation, appropriated and circulated by many different hands. Yet, I argue that diasporic appropriation of the IPC film has tended to reify rather than confront colonial visions of modernity, including that of the postindependence nation-state.6

Insufficient evidence remains from the film’s original production to illuminate the specific history of how and for what perceived purpose Ageless Iraq was made. However, it adheres to the practice of industrial film sponsors commissioning foreign production companies—in this case, the Associated British Pathé—to make prestige documentaries—filmed on location in oil-producing countries, and otherwise produced, written, and edited elsewhere. In this regard, the film is more akin to the Anglo Iranian Oil Company’s (AIOC) film productions, which, as we saw in chapter 1, tended to target foreign audiences—while most of the IPC films were produced in Arabic by the company film unit in Baghdad and screened for local audiences, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Within Iraq, the IPC’s critics viewed the British-controlled oil company as an imperialist institution with unchecked economic power and deep influence within government affairs. To counter associations with British imperialist motives in Iraq, the oil company produced Arabic-language films and magazines to reach Iraqi audiences with stories about their country’s social and economic progress—epitomized by the IPC’s locally produced cine-magazine Beladuna, examined in chapter 3. Ageless Iraq, then, represents a divergent yet complimentary aspect of pipeline cinema: films intended to reach general audiences far afield from the pipeline with a distilled vision of Iraqi petromodernity.

Like all industrial media made in Iraq, whether made for local or international audiences, the film would have needed approval from the Iraqi government prior to distribution. But it is not hard to see why the Hashemite regime would have given approval: they generally regarded the IPC’s film productions as an effective way to promote Iraq’s international image as a modernizing and economically robust state, and Ageless Iraq fit the bill. In addition to theatrical distribution, as chapter 4 illustrated, Ageless Iraq was promoted in trade publications as an educational resource to be screened in British schools and film societies, and in cultural programs on Iraq in European countries, like Sweden.

Many IPC films made for general audiences in Iraq tended not to focus at length on oil. Rather, the filmmakers usually opted—as Elton had advised—not to advertise the company, but to associate it with the prestige of cinema as a modern art form and platform for education and entertainment. While Ageless Iraq is ostensibly a film about Iraq’s history, society, and culture, the film includes two brief sequences that indulge in reproducing the spectacle of oil industrialization, featuring low- and high-angle views of a towering rig and high-key shots of gleaming silver pipes set against a desert landscape. The images are introduced in the later part of the film alongside commentary that ultimately entrenches the story of Iraq’s modernization in the neocolonial economy of oil extraction. Paired with footage of oil workers rigging and operating an oil well, the narrator explains outright, “The revenue from this new wealth is being used to create more wealth for the betterment of the country.”7 In the later sequence, a montage of oil infrastructure ends with a close-up on a billowing orange gas flare, enhanced by the diegetic roar of the flame, then cuts abruptly to a scene of young Iraqi women and girls posing like decorations atop parade floats, which is then followed by a montage of children and young women gathered in schoolyards and classrooms. The voiceover rationalizes the visual juxtaposition of the gas flare and the faces of Iraqi youth, describing a generational cultural shift with language that is anything but subtle: “Today, her revenues from oil are helping Iraq to lay the founding for a new standard of well-being for all. The young people of today know that life is going to be different for them and better—far better—than it was for their fathers.”

The film’s closing scene moves from the schoolyard to a dressmaker’s boutique, where a young Iraqi woman is pictured consulting a seamstress about the calf-length hemline of her dress. The voiceover puts a fine point on the intended message: “For all these young people now there is the chance of a good education and of good health, the primary needs of any people. And it’s natural that with all these modern developments, the women of Iraq are breaking away from their traditional style of dress, unaltered for centuries, to wear the comfortable, practical clothes that are right for this new way of life.” At its conclusion, the film suggests that Iraq’s future is promising and that evidence of its progress can be observed in what women choose to wear—expressing their liberation from a past that, according to the orientalist trope, exists unchanged until the arrival of the Western saviors. This message, originally intended for international audiences during the 1950s, resonated with viewers in the online diaspora fifty years later as retrospective evidence of Iraqi modernity when it was digitized and recirculated in the aftermath of the 2003 United States– and British-led invasion of Iraq.

FIGURES 37 and 38. Ageless Iraq implies a connection between images of IPC oil infrastructure and Iraqi women studying on a modern campus, 1954.

When the Petroleum Film Bureau in London, the nontheatrical film distributor carrying Ageless Iraq, shut down in the 1970s, audience access to the film effectively ended.8 That changed in 2003, when British Pathé initiated a digitization project as part of an effort to revitalize and (re)monetize its entire motion picture archive.9 According to its website, “this has allowed the British Pathé collection to be placed online for everyone to explore,” and also provides a collection from which filmmakers and news outlets, say, can purchase licenses to unique historical footage.10 That same year, the Bush–Cheney administration and the Blair government constructed the false narrative that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction to justify a push for regime change in Iraq. The U.S.- and British-led invasion of Iraq that followed resulted in the deaths of more than one million Iraqis and displacement of millions more. The war also opened Iraqi oil fields to foreign control for the first time since nationalization was declared under the Ba‘th party in 1972.11 Indeed, the only clear victors of the war in Iraq have been oil companies and other foreign corporations, like Halliburton, profiteering in Iraq since 2003.12 BP (once a steering partner of the IPC) was first in line to reestablish control over Iraq’s oil, and, as the company states on its website, “In 2009, bp became the first international oil company to return to Iraq after a period of 35 years.”13 In partnerships with Iraqi state-run oil companies and PetroChina, BP has profited mightily from its position in Iraq since then, doubling oil production capacity in southern Iraq’s Rumaila oil field and working to redevelop the Kirkuk oil field in the North.

As this latest phase of Western imperial plunder ramped up, clips and stills from the digitized version of Ageless Iraq began to circulate online.14 In 2006, when I first encountered the film, it appeared on the British Pathé website as two separate digital video clips that corresponded to the parent analog media objects: “Reel One” and “Reel Two.” A preview of the film was made available on the website free of charge; however, they put a price tag of 50 GBP on the right to license and download each clip.15 By this time, the United States’ occupation of Iraq had established conditions for the rise of unprecedented sectarian-based segregation and violence where it had not existed before, culminating by 2006 in a full-on insurgency against the occupation and civil war that internally displaced nearly 1.7 million people.16 Witnessing the catastrophe unfolding in the country from afar, Iraqis in diaspora around the world used social media to circulate photos and video clips that captured a previous era of colonial modernity. Many of these clips came from the oil industry’s public relations boom in the 1950s, which focused on conveying positivist portrayals of neocolonial extraction and development in the postindependence era. Their success in this endeavor redoubled as they quickly gained engaged audiences who watched, commented, liked, and shared the posts.

Once digitized and made available online in 2006, the IPC documentary Ageless Iraq circulated online as visible evidence of what Iraq had once been in its golden age. In the years that followed, “Reel One”—the first half of the original film—surfaced in Iraqi social media networks. YouTube users based in different countries posted the nearly ten-minute-long clip ripped from the Pathé website, effectively establishing new relay points that extended and amplified the reach of Ageless Iraq outside of official channels.17 One extremely popular YouTube video featuring the digitized half-version of the original film, posted under the username Raw3aSweden in December 2009, has received over 155,500 views to date, and an audience that continues to grow.18 The IPC film positions mid-century Iraq as a modernizing force in the Middle East with a bright and prosperous future that pays homage to Mesopotamia’s storied ancient past. In this narrative, the glory of ancient civilization is cast as the true destiny of Iraq, but one only possible through the ongoing project of petromodernity. Today, the documentary footage stands in as a testimony to Iraqi modernity, even if captured fifty years ago. The circulation of the clip implied a narrative of what Iraq was, which, when shared in 2006, countervailed images of the contemporary war and invited a nostalgic gaze that celebrated a lost era of neocolonial modernization. This alternative story of Iraq likely offered many viewers a kind of solace through their grief, as they experienced overwhelming disbelief and attempted to make sense of how much of the country and its promised future had been destroyed and taken away. Yet Ageless Iraq’s popularity online also indicates a troubling revisionism of the 1950s, a period enabled by British imperial domination and state-sanctioned violence. Nostalgia induced by the online emergence of pipeline cinema reveals recursive logics of the postcolony, which for some, Edward Said points out, leads to overlooking the deprivations and humiliations of imperialism in light of the “benefits—liberal ideas, national self-consciousness, and technological goods” precipitated under colonial rule.19

As the “Reel One” clip remains up on the site today, we can assume that British Pathé has either not discovered the post or has not endeavored to stop the YouTube user’s violation of licensing policies. But on April 13, 2014, timed precisely to coincide with the eleven-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in the year that the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or DA’ESH) began its ascendency in parts of northern and western Iraq, British Pathé launched its own presence on YouTube featuring a video post titled “Ageless Iraq Reel 1 (1950–1959).” This video—likely thanks, at least in part, to the Business Insider piece about it that came out two months later—became popular too, and has received over 353,000 views to date, a number that continues to increase daily.20 Pathé evidently took notice: On August 8, 2014, as part of rebranding its YouTube channel, Pathé posted a new three-minute and forty-five-second, reedited version of its digital reproduction of Ageless Iraq. This condensed and recut version is titled “Welcome to Baghdad: How Iraq Used to Be in the 1950s,” and includes the social media tags “#BritishPathé #History #Iraq #Baghdad #1950s #Fifties #MiddleEast,” and a description that promises “fascinating insight into Iraq in the 1950s. It is a country that is steeped in a rich history and culture. The very beginnings of civilisation started here. It is where man began cultivating the land and where writing was conceived. It even used to be a tourist hot spot.”21 To date, the video has been viewed more than 1,734,000 times and continues to gain significant visibility.22

Between 2014 and 2017, the Business Insider article and subsequent posts appeared on other platforms that echoed the nostalgic messaging around what Iraq used to be like and reproduced screengrabs from Ageless Iraq. A 2017 webpage with the title, “These pictures of Iraq 60 years ago will make you wish you lived there” draws its information from the article, various twitter posts, and online photo essays featuring black-and-white photographs of Iraq from 1950s and ’60s.23 The Business insider article and “These pictures of Iraq 60 years ago” both refer to the same tweet from the account @Iraqpics, which reads, “The city of #Basra was once called ‘The Venice of the East’ for its many rivers & canals,” a common invocation of the city’s past on the basis of its comparison to Western Europe.24 The tweet from June 2014 (two months before British Pathé posted its three-minute version of Ageless Iraq) embodies a prevalent inclination within narratives shared among Iraqi diasporans since 2006, to refer to Iraq’s past as separate and more civilized than the present and the recent past.

I observed this tendency countless times in emails forwarded to me by my father that had been shared with him and circulated among Iraqi friends, family, and colleagues. These emails typically contained an attachment—an anonymously created PowerPoint slideshow, PDF, or YouTube link—that presented a sequence of photographic images assembled from scanned books and family albums or screenshots of websites or videos. While they may have varied in form and content, these slideshows consistently reproduced a common message: Look and see for yourself how modern and beautiful Iraq used to be. The proliferation of emails, tweets, dedicated Facebook pages and other social media accounts signal a persistent desire and impulse among Iraqis to remember, to memorialize, and to prove with visible evidence at their disposal what Iraq had been before, perhaps as a way to wail against the injustices that have come to bear on the country and its people in the twenty-first century. The scripted commentary and high-quality film footage in Ageless Iraq conveys an uncomplicated and seemingly incontrovertible story of modern Iraq, delivered in the authoritative voice of the British narrator. When shared online by other Iraqis, it is as if to say: Look and see for yourself how modern and beautiful Iraq used to be, according to the “West.” While the British Pathé or Business Insider did not invent this discursive trend, they capitalized on it and created new access to Ageless Iraq for viewers around the world.

Missing from Pathé’s edited short and the online articles that reproduce screenshots from the video are any of the depictions of the oil industry or references to the oil company that were so central to the message and making of Ageless Iraq. These absences premise the film’s online presentation upon what Ingravalle describes as “the precise curatorial intent of sidestepping considerations related to Britain’s colonial history.”25 Oil is excluded altogether from these abbreviated versions of the story of modern Iraq, as is any evidence that the film itself was sponsored by the IPC. And the omissions of British imperialism that the original film already made—signs of labor unrest, exploitation, profits shuttled abroad—are, of course, repeated. In other words, the Business Insider and Pathé versions of the original film expunge any trace of historical context for these alluring pictures of Iraq in the 1950s, including imperial desires to control Iraq’s oil, the repressive measures carried out by the oil company and the Hashemite regime to ensure that control, and the push to publicize the country’s postcolonial development funded by the government’s fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement with the IPC.26 These historical exclusions remain relevant in the twenty-first century, as imperial desires to control the country’s oil fields have motivated the British- and U.S.-led invasion, occupation, and profiteering.

Ageless Iraq is a well-earned title, for it is this film’s uncomplicated narrative and beautiful images of modern Iraq that endure in the public eye. Beyond its afterlives on social media, clips of the digitized film have been used as archival footage in numerous documentary films about Iraq, including Forget Baghdad (dir. Samir Naqqash, Germany/Switzerland, 2003) and Iraq’s Invisible Beauty (dir. Sahim Omar Kalifa, Belgium/France, 2023). Both films examine the country’s history through first-person perspectives of Iraqis who lived through the political upheavals of the 1950s and beyond and thus contextualize the footage with nuanced and subjective narratives of events during the period. Scenes from Ageless Iraq, in these circumstances, have been translated to the b-roll that stands in for the image of the modern country. Taken further out of context, the film’s sponsorship by the oil company goes unacknowledged and its source is simply attributed to the British Pathé, which is taken to be a “pioneering” repository of historical newsreel and documentary footage.27

More than fifty years after the production of Ageless Iraq, the same oil- sponsored imagery that the IPC had produced as part of its effort to prevent oil nationalization in Iraq acquired new resonance among audiences in the twenty-first century. During the 1950s, these cinematic images of Iraq as a modernizing oil state failed to protect the status of the neocolonial institution: the IPC’s status was severely diminished after the 1958 Revolution and the Ba‘th party’s nationalization of Iraq’s oil in 1972. But today British Petroleum has returned to Iraq and IPC’s film has returned to the screen (albeit the computer screen). In its digitized form, the oil film has been reproduced, copied, and interpreted via the Internet in ways that could never have been anticipated by any of its original creators—becoming attached to diasporic discourses about Iraq’s past through social media platforms and email chains. Clips of Ageless Iraq continue to be shared and watched among Iraqis and others lamenting the loss of the bright future promised in the oil film. Yet, even when not acknowledged, the violence and greed that fueled oil imperialism are ever-present in the vision of the past memorialized in Ageless Iraq.

In the context of imperial wars and occupation during the twenty-first century, the oil company’s impressive footage of mid-twentieth-century Iraq has been stripped of its associations with the petroleum industry and come to signify a simplified story of modern Iraq. Lost in this resurfacing are the conditions of British economic imperialism and militarism that enabled the IPC’s monopoly over Iraq’s oil and brought these images into being. This book has attempted to counteract the work of such erasures, which stoke a tendency toward forgetting where these images come from and their entanglements with the agents of oil imperialism that they were made to serve. Beyond images made for the screen, the broader perspective of pipeline cinema offered in this book calls forth other evocative images of oil’s cultural infrastructure: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, the renowned poet, bent over his desk translating the script of a pipeline documentary; Munir Bashir plucking oud strings in a recording studio to create title music for the oil company’s cine-magazine; Abdul Latif Saleh, a young film trainee, confiding in a letter to his British mentor Peter Kelly about the pride he felt after completing a recent film; the bitter departure of Yousef Andrews, Saleh’s colleague in the IPC film unit, after years of fruitless negotiations for higher pay; Kurdish audience members translating the Arabic commentary of an oil film for one another in a darkened movie theater; and John Shearman’s realization upon arriving in Iran that his role as a film supervisor had become obsolete with the establishment of the Golestan Film Workshop. Such images reveal the textures and tensions of oil’s cultural work and shine a light on the agency of its cultural workers and audiences. Close attention to the many dimensions of pipeline cinema—its films, creative labor, and audiences—reveals that ultimately, despite their efforts, oil companies could not then and cannot now control how oil stories take shape and move through the world.

NOTES

PROLOGUE

1. My attunement to the significance of this discovery arose in dialogue with Sherene Seikaly, “How I Met My Great-Grandfather,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38, no. 1 (May 2018): 6–20.

2. William Subhiyah, “A Gourmet in Iraq: Some Favourite Dishes,” Iraq Petroleum 6, no. 4 (November 1956): 29.

3. William Subhiyah, “A Gourmet in the Arab World,” Iraq Petroleum 4, no. 11 (June 1955): 25.

4. Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford University Press, 2014), 2.

5. A reference to Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton University Press, 2009).

INTRODUCTION

1. Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Princesses’ Street, trans. Issa J. Boullata (University of Arkansas Press, 2005), 152–54.

2. See Issa J. Boullata, “Living with the Tigress and the Muses: An Essay on Jabra Ibrahim Jabra,” World Literature Today 75, no. 2 (2001): 214–23; and Nathaniel Greenberg, “Political Modernism, Jabra, and the Baghdad Modern Art Group,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 12, no. 2 (June 2010): 1–10.

3. See Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor, Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain (British Film Institute, 2019).

4. The British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council, “Michael Clarke,” News on Screen, accessed July 5, 2024, http://bufvc.ac.uk/newsonscreen/search/index.php /person/1424.

5. “Welcome to a New Film User: The Iraq Petroleum Co.,” Film User, January 1953, 47.

6. Clarke inquired with a colleague about finding a talented local writer with “a modern outlook” and was referred to Jabra. Michael Clarke, interview by John Legard, audio recording, October 20, 1993, The British Entertainment History Project, https://historyproject.org .uk/interview/michael-clarke.

7. Jabra, Princesses’ Street, 156. The IPC produced Arabic, English, and French versions of the film.

8. Jabra, Princesses’ Street, 155.

9. For more details related to the magazine’s contents, see Tiffany Floyd, “Ahl al Naft: An Adventure,” Sawt Al-Arsheef, August 5, 2023, https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/research/faculty -labs-and-projects/al-mawrid/reesearch/sawt-al-arsheef.html.

10. Jabra, Princesses’ Street, 184

11. Lisa Parks, “Stuff You Can Kick: Toward a Theory of Media Infrastructures,” in Between Humanities and the Digital, ed. Patrik Svensson and David Theo Goldberg (MIT Press, 2015).

12. According to decolonial environmental humanities scholar Macarena Gómez- Barris, extractivism, a term developed within contextual reference to Latin America, refers to the parasitic “colonial paradigm, worldview, and technologies that mark out regions of ‘high biodiversity’ in order to reduce life to capitalist resource conversion.” This framework recognizes that our planet is not inherently made up of resource commodities. State and corporate regimes transform earthly elements of life into resources through violent systems of removal and upheaval that reorganize land, ecologies, and social life and generate economic inequality through practices of enclosure, dispossession, and displacement. See Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (Duke University Press, 2017), xvi.

13. While pipelines may be perceived to represent security and stability, Michael Watts emphasizes that they are in fact “fantastically leaky,” vulnerable to decay, disruption, theft, and sabotage, with “no guarantee of success.” See Michael Watts, “Another Form of Hydrocarbon Capitalism: Commodity Theft, Pipeline Politics and Frontier Spaces,” Winter 2024 Global Studies Colloquium: Michael Watts, February 28, 2024, www.youtube.com /watch?v=77Jidd3NlvI.

14. Corporate film sponsorship is not exclusive to the oil industry. In Image Worlds, a study of General Electric’s (GE) photographic archive, David E. Nye argues that corporations develop complex communication systems that “cannot be dismissed as a secondary or tertiary institution but must be studied as the principal instrument coordinating and harmonizing the corporation’s activities.” See Nye, Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890–1930 (MIT Press, 1985), quotation on 5; Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau, Films That Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media (Amsterdam University Press, 2009); and Vinzenz Hediger et al., eds., Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).

15. Building upon early interventions by Imre Szeman and Stephanie LeMenager, energy humanities has developed into a generative interdisciplinary field of scholarly engagement with oil as a cultural phenomenon. See Imre Szeman, “System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster,” South Atlantic Quarterly 106, no. 4 (2007): 821. See also Szeman, “The Cultural Politics of Oil: On Lessons of Darkness and Black Sea Files,” Polygraph 22 (2010): 33–45; Szeman, “Crude Aesthetics: The Politics of Oil Documentaries,” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 2 (2012): 423–39; Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford University Press, 2014); Daniel Worden and Ross Barrett, eds., Oil Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer, eds., Energy Humanities: An Anthology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017); and Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman, eds., Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture (McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2017). Film studies have figured significantly in the breadth of research encompassed by the energy humanities umbrella, to draw out the stakes of cinema’s role in extractivist logics and practices. See Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); Jaikumar and Grieveson, “Media and Extraction: A Brief Research Manifesto,” Journal of Environmental Media 3, no. 2 (December 2022): 197–206; and Brian R. Jacobson, The Cinema of Extractions: Film Materials and Their Forms (Columbia University Press, 2025).

16. LeMenager, Living Oil, 67.

17. While literature in the energy humanities remains largely situated within the purview of the control centers of extractive capitalism in North America and Europe, a significant rise of recent contributions by film, media, and art historians has brought forward new histories of producing contexts in countries in the Global South, demonstrating that the colonial and postcolonial geographies of extraction that were once assumed to be “peripheral” to the oil industry are in fact central to the study of petroculture. Ravi Vasudevan maps the extensive filmmaking investments of the Burmah-Shell Oil Company in the Indian subcontinent between the late 1920s and 1950s and sheds light on a rich genealogy of documentary filmmaking and publicity practices. Rudmer Canjels brings this line of historical inquiry toward the specificities of how Shell’s Nigerian film unit evolved its practices in the context of Africanization policies of the 1950s and leading up to Nigeria’s independence from British colonial rule in 1960. Elsewhere, María Gabriela Colmenares provides a historically grounded analysis of documentaries produced by the Shell Film Unit in Venezuela that reinforced modernization as a binary paradigm for national development. See Vasudevan, “‘In India’s Life and Part of It’: Film and Visual Publicity at Burmah-Shell from the 1920s to the 1950s,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 183–207; Canjels, “Creating Partners in Progress: Shell Communicating Oil During Nigeria’s Independence,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021); Canjels, “Framing Local and International Sentiments and Sounds: Unilever and Royal Dutch Shell in a Changing Nigeria,” in Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film, ed. Vinzenz Hediger et al. (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), 473–94; and Colmenares, “La Venezuela rural tradicional según la Unidad Fílmica Shell,” IMAGOFAGIA, no. 18 (2021): 274–300. For specific histories of oil industry film sponsorship on the Arabian Peninsula, see Robert Vitalis, “Wallace Stegner’s Arabian Discovery: Imperial Blind Spots in a Continental Vision,” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 3 (August 2007): 405–38; and Firat Oruc, “Petrocolonial Circulations and Cinema’s Arrival in the Gulf,” Film History 32, no. 3 (2020): 10–42. Recent studies have drawn focus to histories of oil company magazine production and circulation in the Middle East and Venezuela. See Laleh Khalili, “Crude Knowledge: Petro-Periodicals and Resource Sovereignty,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 56, no. 3 (2024): 446–64; Nelida Fuccaro, “The Oil Company’s Fields of Vision: Public Relations and Labour Images in the Arab World,” in Life Worlds of Middle Eastern Oil: Histories and Ethnographies of Black Gold, ed. Nelida Fuccaro and Mandana E. Limbert (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), 87–119; Maria Zazzarino, “Magic and Haunting: Oil Media at Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo,” Media+Environment 4, no. 1 (August 2022), https://mediaenviron.org/article/36323-magic-and-haunting-oil-media-at-venezuela-s -lake-maracaibo; Mariam Elnozahy, “Visualizing Oil in Aramco World Magazine: Public Relations and Corporate Photography from 1949–1960” (MS thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022); and Tiffany Floyd, “Floating on Oil and Antiquities: Iraq Petroleum, Al Amiloon Fil Naft and Iraqi Cultural Modernism,” Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1 (March 2021): 85–101.

18. Film historians Priya Jaikumar and Lee Grieveson underscore the necessity of this reorientation in their galvanizing research manifest, which argues, “Recognizing media’s links to the extraction of carbon energy reformulates global media studies. It forces a reckoning with the racial capitalism that underpinned the emergence of modernity, media and its energy sources and raw materials. Media’s relation to extraction consequently highlights genealogies frequently left out of world histories centered on Europe and the United States.” Jaikumar and Grieveson, “Media and Extraction: A Brief Research Manifesto,” 197–206.

19. Three recent films and an emerging body of research in progress have begun to made strides in addressing this lacuna. Experimental documentaries by researcher-filmmakers Sanaz Sohrabi and Nariman Massoumi have brought forth provocative and insightful engagements with cultural histories of oil in Iran through BP’s photographic and film archives. See One Image, Two Acts, dir. Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020; Scenes of Extraction, dir. Sanaz Sohrabi, 2023; and Pouring Water on Troubled Oil, dir. Nariman Massoumi, 2023. Likewise, artist-researcher Ala Younis contends with Iraq’s oil history through the cultural traces of the IPC in her project Al-Bahithūn [The (re)searchers], named after a 1978 Iraqi film set in Iraq’s nationalized Rumaila oil fields. Younis created the project for “Crude,” an exhibition hosted by the Jameel Arts Center in Dubai in 2018–19 and curated by Murtaza Vali, which brought together seventeen artists and collectives to consider oil as a driver of social, cultural, and economic transformation as well as geopolitical upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa. See Younis, “Al-Bahithūn: Sounds That Call to the (Oil) Fields,” in Life Worlds of Middle Eastern Oil: Histories and Ethnographies of Black Gold, ed. Nelida Fuccaro and Mandana E. Limbert (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), 120–36. In January 2025, Malcolm Cook and Peter Adkins convened “Crude Representations: BP and the Cultural Imagination of Oil,” a symposium and series of talks that featured presentations of work in progress and forthcoming publications related to the cultural dimensions of oil company operations in Iraq and Iran, including by Laith Shakir, Madison Leeson, Mattin Biglari, Matthew Vollgraff, Nariman Massoumi, Kaveh Ehsani, and Raha Golestani. Hadeel Abdelhameed investigates how the Ba‘th party in Iraq channeled oil wealth into strengthening state propaganda vis-à-vis the Rashid Theater, an emblematic national performing arts venue in Baghdad. Abdelhameed, “The Rashid Theater in Baghdad: The Drama of a Nation,” The Middle East Journal 77, no. 3–4 (2024): 271–89.

20. See Timothy Mitchell, “Carbon Democracy,” Economy and Society 38, no. 3 (August 2009): 399–432; and Michael J. Watts, “A Tale of Two Gulfs: Life, Death, and Dispossession Along Two Oil Frontiers,” American Quarterly 64, no. 3 (2012): 437–67.

21. See J. Connan, “Use and Trade of Bitumen in Antiquity and Prehistory: Molecular Archaeology Reveals Secrets of Past Civilizations,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 354, no. 1379 (1999): 33–50; and Rasoul Sorkhabi, “Pre-Modern History of Bitumen, Oil and Gas in Persia (Iran),” Oil Industry History 6, no. 1 (2005): 153–77. Narratives of historical continuity in the oil economy aid in legitimizing industrial-scale extraction, and so, unsurprisingly, published research on the pre-history of industrial petroleum extraction is typically funded by or otherwise connected to the petroleum industry.

22. Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (Verso, 2011), 47–48.

23. This was largely because the oil concession in Iran gave British investors exclusive rights for pipeline construction, thus satisfying the European interest in preventing Russia from realizing a proposed pipeline from Baku to the Persian Gulf. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 49–50.

24. Katayoun Shafiee, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (MIT Press, 2018), 4; Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 50.

25. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (Simon & Schuster, 1991), 148–49; James H. Bamberg, A History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 2, The Anglo-Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1982). For a critical history of APOC’s expansion and property acquisition during this period, see Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 21–55.

26. Yergin, Prize, 161.

27. The TPC formed as a multinational conglomerate in 1912. The original shareholders included APOC, Shell, Deutsche Bank, and an Armenian businessman named Calouste Gulbenkian (who received a 5 percent stake for his role in negotiating the arrangement). Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 58.

28. Arbella Bet-Shlimon contends that Sykes prioritized British interest in maintaining control of the oil-rich Kirkuk area in negotiations of the agreement, while the remainder of the Mosul province was ceded to French control. After the British military occupation of Mosul in 1918 and the formal establishment of Britain’s control over the Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra provinces at the San Remo Conference in 1920, the French—eventually through Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP)—were allotted a 25 percent share of TPC (previously held by Deutsche Bank) in exchange for their recognition of the British mandate. See Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), 35–36. For a critical historiography of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, see Sara Pursley, “Lines Drawn on an Empty Map: Iraq’s Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State,” Jadaliyya, June 3, 2015, www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32153.

29. According to Daniel Yergin, the infamous gusher reached fifty feet above the derrick and “the countryside was drenched with oil, the hollows filled with poisonous gas,” such that “whole villages in the area were threatened, and the town of Kirkuk itself was in danger.” See Yergin, Prize, 204. Shares in the consortium were redistributed so that shares were divided equally among the APOC, Shell, CFP, and the Near East Development Corporation (a consortium of U.S. oil companies including Standard Oil), except for 5 percent of the shares which remained with Gulbenkian. The oil companies effectively established a cartel under the “Red Line Agreement,” which necessitated cooperation within the regions formerly under Ottoman rule. See Yergin, Prize, 203–6; and Bamberg, History of the British Petroleum Company, 2:161–62.

30. In the years following the discovery in Baba Gurgur, the IPC abandoned active exploration efforts and denied the Iraqi government’s demand for a pipeline to export its oil to the Mediterranean. See Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 102.

31. The IPC negotiated with Nuri al-Said (Iraq’s pro-British prime minister) to expand rights to oil production and export under what were widely regarded as extremely unfavorable terms for the Iraqi government. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 102.

32. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 147.

33. For a detailed account of the Development Board’s organization, functions, and revenue sources, see Mahmud Al-Habib, “The Iraq Development Board,” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly 36, no. 2 (September 1955): 185–90.

34. For a historical account of the negotiations that led to oil nationalization in Iraq, see Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2021). For a history of Ba‘th violence in northern Iraq after 1972, see chapter 6 in Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold.

35. Oil company film use developed in parallel to British colonial film use, and similarly, as Lee Grieveson explains, the British government’s considerable investment in film use to supplement colonial governance from 1939 to 1965 “was predicated on ideas both about film as a symbol of technological modernity that embodied and projected colonial authority and, relatedly, about its persuasive power over ‘unsophisticated’ populations,” or in other words, “about the utility of cinema for engineering consent and managing the conduct of diverse populations.” Grieveson, “Introduction,” in Film and the End of Empire, ed. Lee Grieveson and Colin M. J. MacCabe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 2–4.

36. Cinema and oil are inextricable. Oil has always been an integral feature of the cinematic image and, as Nadia Bozak argues in The Cinematic Footprint, “cinema is intricately woven into industrial culture and the energy economy that sustains it.” This has been the case since the origins of the moving image. As a substance that is essential in making plastic—the material basis of film stock, equipment, and digital cameras—petroleum has its imprint on nearly every film frame. Beyond its materiality, “the hydro-carbon imagination” of cinema, Bozak contends, can be traced to some of the earliest stories captured on film. See Bozak, The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources (Rutgers University Press, 2011), 1; Dahlquist and Vonderau, Petrocinema, 1–2; Jaikumar and Grieveson, “Media and Extraction”; and Jacobson, The Cinema of Extractions.

37. Chapter 4 examines the limits of such assumptions, demonstrating audience sensitivity to the sloppiness of poorly conceived translations and lack of attention to cultural difference in Iraq’s ethnically diverse northern region.

38. Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor contend, “Multinational operation based on developing the natural resources of numerous dispersed territories, with no guarantee of success, placed a premium on well-honed public relations,” and thus, “no sector of society made more enthusiastic use of the sponsored film than the oil companies; no medium was more enthusiastically embraced by them than the documentary film, and so nobody interested in the relationship of media to society can afford to leave the post-war oil documentary out of its history.” Russell and Taylor, Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain (British Film Institute, 2010), 87–88.

39. Foundational studies of infrastructure tend to emphasize infrastructure’s invisibility in everyday life until it fails; however, film and media studies scholars have interrogated how infrastructure’s visibility is deliberately managed to obscure the toxic conditions they produce in fence-line communities and the bodies of workers who are disproportionately Brown, Black, Indigenous, working-class, or impoverished. Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski have argued that in capitalist societies “infrastructures are defined by their invisibility,” which builds on the premise of Susan Leigh Star’s early work on infrastructure as an object of anthropological inquiry. Elsewhere, Parks examines the “politics of infrastructural visibility” in a study that demonstrates how companies work to strategically conceal infrastructures such as cell phone towers in order to control public perception. Brian Jacobson takes up this concern in relation to industrially sponsored films, which he describes as a “key tool” for corporate management of infrastructure’s visibility. For oil companies, Jacobson argues, films “represent a calculated risk that operates on the tenuous balance of desirable visibility and the threat of overexposure.” Star, “The Ethnography of Infrastructure,” American Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 3 (November 1999): 377–91; Parks and Starosielski, eds., Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures (University of Illinois Press, 2015), 6; Parks, “Around the Antenna Tree: The Politics of Infrastructural Visibility,” ACM SIGGRAPH, 2007, 345; Jacobson, “Industrial Film and the Politics of Visibility,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 164. Oil’s (in)visibility has also been taken up as a concern within literary studies. Jennifer Wenzel questions how we can read for oil even as we recognize the duality of its ubiquity and its absence from our field of vision, and Graeme Macdonald theorizes on the significance of “seeing pipelines as cultural objects.” See Wenzel, “How to Read for Oil,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 1, no. 3 (2014): 156–61; and Macdonald, “Containing Oil: The Pipeline in Petroculture,” in Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture, ed. Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 36–77.

40. In the germinal volume Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, editors Marina Dalquist and Patrick Vondereau consolidate recent scholarship on oil industry film sponsorship and exhort a reconsideration of documentary film history through the lens of the petroleum industry. Dahlquist and Vonderau, “Introduction,” Petrocinema, 3.

41. Russell and Taylor, Shadows of Progress, 5, 21; Colin Burgess, “Sixty Years of Shell Film Sponsorship, 1934–94,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 7, no. 2 (August 2010): 213–31.

42. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 60–61.

43. For more on the particularities and distinctions between BP (formerly AIOC) and Shell’s approaches to film use, see Patrick Russell and Steven Fox, “Shell-BP: A Dialogue,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021): 51–78.

44. Rachel Webb Jekanowski writes extensively about oil companies, film sponsorship, and resource extraction in the Canadian context with a critical eye toward exclusions inherent in the national imaginaries promulgated through sponsored films. See Jekanowski, “Contested and Emergent Futures: Film and Energy Regimes of the Newfoundland Offshore,” in Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures, ed. Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson (Routledge, 2022), 116–36; and Jekanowski, “Fuelling the Nation: Imaginaries of Western Oil in Canadian Nontheatrical Film,” Canadian Journal of Communication 43, no. 1 (2018): 111–25.

45. On portability and 16mm projection, see Haidee Wasson, “Protocols of Portability,” Film History: An International Journal 25, no. 1 (2013): 236–47.

46. Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 1, The Artisanal Era, 1897–1941 (Duke University Press, 2011), 112.

47. According to Steven Foxon, Associated Realist Film Producers (ARFP), a precursor to Film Centre, was established in December 1935 to liase between potential corporate sponsors and an association of a dozen or so filmmakers with Arthur Elton at the helm. Film Centre was set up when, as Foxon writes, “Grierson resigned from the GPO in June 1937, noting that the world was expanding and that international organisations were looking in the direction of the documentary,” and thus recognizing “a real need for an outside body that could guarantee to look after the interests of the sponsors . . . he formed a new, independently financed outfit, called Film Centre, to meet that need.” Film Centre took on the role of advising sponsors, supervising film productions, arranging film distribution, promoting new “territories” for production, and guiding policy. Steven Foxon, “Film Centre (United Kingdom),” in Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, (Routledge, 2006), 1:411–12. Also see Russell and Taylor, Shadows of Progress, 11.

48. In addition to film sponsorship, oil companies have performed other forms of cultural sponsorship that, similarly, are intended to elevate the corporations’ reputation through association and patronage. Until today, this remains a point of contention among climate justice activist groups (such as Liberate Tate and BP or Not BP) that have demonstrated against the normalization of BP sponsorship of cultural institutions and openly contested the company’s effort to maintain cultural legitimacy while catastrophic effects of global warming overwhelm the planet. Multiyear campaigns in Britain successfully pressured the Tate Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House, and (temporarily) the British Museum to cease fiscal ties to BP. However, just six months after it claimed to cut ties with BP, the British Museum announced a new plan for the oil company to fund a major one billion GBP redevelopment project, which, according to Mark Brown reporting for The Guardian, the museum described as “the biggest ever single donation to the UK’s cultural sector.” See “Liberate Tate’s Six-Year Campaign to End BP’s Art Gallery Sponsorship—in Pictures,” The Guardian, March 19, 2016, www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2016 /mar/19/liberate-tates-six-year-campaign-to-end-bps-art-gallery-sponsorship-in-pictures; Esther Addley, “British Museum Ends BP Sponsorship Deal After 27 Years,” The Guardian, June 2, 2023, www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jun/02/british-museum-ends-bp -sponsorship-deal-after-27-years; and Mark Brown, “British Museum’s BP Sponsorship Deal ‘Astonishingly Out of Touch,’” The Guardian, December 19, 2023, www.theguardian.com /culture/2023/dec/19/british-museum-bp-sponsorship-deal-astonishingly-out-of-touch.

49. Local oil company film units emerged contemporaneously with the British government’s Colonial Film Unit (CFU) pivot to establish training schools and local film units in its colonies throughout Africa. Since 1939, the London-based CFU had been making films for audiences in the colonies, guided by assumptions of racial supremacy and a principle of labor “modernization” intended to drive an increase in colonial economic productivity. In 1948, the CFU established new film training schools in multiple locations, such as Ghana, Cyprus, and London, for students from British colonies and former colonies, including Mauritius, Haiti, Hong Kong, the Sudan, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Iraq. According to film historian Tom Rice, the British government used these training programs and local units to mediate local access to film equipment and knowledge as a way to keep a “foothold” in former colonies within a geopolitical context where anticolonial movements increasingly led to national independence. By 1954, CFU head William Sellers advocated for local film units, reasoning that linguistic and cultural barriers created an obstacle to effective persuasion, and “if successful films were to be made for the people and with the people, they must be made by the people.” Rice, “Working through the End of Empire,” in Films That Work Harder: The Circulation of Industrial Film (Amsterdam University Press, 2023): 498–509, Sellers quotation on 503. For an in-depth study of CFU’s changing operations in Africa, South Asia, and the West Indies during the transition toward independence from British imperial rule, see Rice, Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (University of California Press, 2019).

50. “Welcome to a New Film User: The Iraq Petroleum Co.,” Film User, January 1953, 47.

51. At the same time, the IPC also imported commercial entertainment films, as discussed in chapter 4. In Iraq, the oil company exhibited industrially sponsored films nontheatrically alongside commercial films in company towns, an example that illuminates global dimensions of what Haidee Wasson and Charles Acland describe, in relation to the nontheatrical sector of film exhibition in the North American context, as “useful cinema,” which they describe as constituting “a substantial and enduring parallel to the more spectacular realm of commercial film.” Charles R. Acland and Haidee Wasson, Useful Cinema (Duke University Press, 2011), 2.

52. In the book’s epilogue I examine, in detail, the circumstances of the film’s reemergence and circulation through social media in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

53. Thomas Elsaesser offers the “rule of three A’s,” which have been influential in guiding research on industrial film: who commissioned the film (Auftraggeber), for what purpose was it commissioned (Anlass), and what was the film used for / to whom was it addressed (Anwendung/Adressat). Elsaesser, “Archives and Archaeologies: The Place of Non-Fiction Film in Contemporary Media,” in Films That Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 23–24. Drawing upon Elsaesser’s guiding principles for industrial film studies, film scholars Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vondereau put it this way: “Far from constituting self-sufficient entities for aesthetic analysis, industrial and utility films have to be understood in terms of their specific, usually organizational, purpose, and in the very context of power and organizational practice in which they appear . . . as objects of knowledge, industrial films transcend the boundaries of the material object of film found in the archive and refer to a dispositif, a complex constellation of media, technology, forms of knowledge, discourse, and social organization.” Hediger and Vonderau, “Introduction,” Films That Work, 11–12. On the slippery, dispersed, and piecemeal nature of cinema archives that pertain to the Middle East and oil company public relations archives, see Kaveh Askari, Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit (University of California Press, 2022), 8–13; and Fuccaro, “Oil Company’s Fields of Vision.”

54. The BP archive is located in the University of Warwick. In 2015, student activists began calling for the archive’s removal from campus as part of the fossil fuel divestment movement. With legitimate reasons for concern, the students object in part to the insufficient access permitted by the archive to materials held at a public institution. As I discuss below, the BP archive has recently imposed further restrictions on research access to materials post-1954. See Terry Macalister, “Warwick University Students Call for Closure of BP Archive on Campus,” The Guardian, October 4, 2015, www.theguardian.com/business/2015 /oct/04/warwick-university-bp-archive-students-chancellor.

55. During my first visit to the BPVL, I learned that the company was in the early stages of digitizing its film collection in order to monetize it by making footage accessible online for commercial licensing. In terms of research, this move to digitization both aided and complicated my ability to access the films. The BPVL website (www.bpvideolibrary.com) provides open access to a searchable database of APOC-, AIOC-, and BP-sponsored films. Each title includes video playback as well as a metadata section with a synopsis, shot list, and (for some titles) a summary of historical information related to production context in the margin. Frustratingly, however, the original documents referenced in these historical summaries are absent or missing from the BP archive and archivists were unable to determine their whereabouts. The BPVL has one IPC title, The Third River, and for unknown reasons the film was only partially digitized for online playback. For further discussion of the BP video library and its digitization project, see Mona Damluji, “Oil Media Archives,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 15–32.

56. The BFI holds master copies of several IPC films and episodes of the IPC cine-magazine. For preservation purposes, no viewing copies are available for some of these titles.

57. I originally accessed Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU) interviews on tapes housed in the BFI Archive. Since then, the interview collection was digitized and made available online: https://historyproject.org .uk/gallery?field_industry_tid=All&field_work_area_craft_role_tid=All&sort_by=field _surname_value&sort_order=ASC (accessed July 5, 2024).

58. See Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 1, The Artisanal Era, 1897–1941 (Duke University Press, 2011), 182–86. On the Oil Consortium films, see Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 2, The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Duke University Press, 2011), 31–33, 76–81.

59. Iraqi cinema histories have received limited attention, a situation that has only been exacerbated by the lack of film preservation attributed to decades of sanctions, war, and mass displacement as well as extensive looting and destruction of paper archives and cultural institutions in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country. Several recent articles by Pelle Valentin Olsen engage with new archives of leisure and expand the scope of cinema studies of Iraq in new directions. See Olsen, “Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen and the Archives of Leisure,” Regards 26 (2021): 129–41; Olsen, “Al-Qahira-Baghdad: The Transnational and Transregional History of Iraq’s Early Cinema Industry,” Arab Studies Journal 29, no. 2 (2021): 8–33; and Olsen, “A Tale of Three Brothers: Ezra, Meʾir, and Hayyawi Sawdaʾi and the History of an Iraqi Jewish Cinema Business,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 55, no. 4 (November 2023): 630–49. Other major studies of Iraqi cinema history include Shakir Nouri, À La Recherche Du Cinéma Irakien: Histoire, Infrastructure, Filmographie, 1945–1985 (L’Harmattan, 1986); Jabar Allawi, “Television and Film in Iraq: Socio-Political and Cultural Study: 1946–1980” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1983); Mahdi ‘Abbas, Kitabat Fi Al-Sinama al-‘Iraqiyya, Baghdad (Baghdad: Dar al-Shu’un al-Thaqafiyya al-‘Amma, 2006); and Elizabeth Bishop, “Politics of Cinema in Hashemite Iraq,” Oriente Moderno 93, no. 1 (2013): 101–26.

60. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba‘thists and Free Officers (Princeton University Press, 1978).

61. This book is informed by interviews, publications, and online sources that make it possible to include the perspectives of Iranian and Iraqi contributors to pipeline cinema; however, I was not able to conduct research inside of Iran and Iraq for this project. On the limits and critical readings of colonial archives, see Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton University Press, 2008).

62. Outside of the IPC’s magazine publications Iraq Peroleum and Ahl Al-Naft, most coverage related to the oil company films appears in foreign and industry publications, including the Petroleum Times, World Film News, the Financial Times, and the Iraq Times, where reportage on the IPC’s activities typically echoed the talking points of a press release. My efforts to find references to IPC films in Arabic-language newspapers yielded no results—an informative outcome. The gap between laudatory coverage of IPC Arabic films in English-language news media and the relative absence of commentary in local Arabic periodicals calls into question the oil company’s assumption that its films would be persuasive in shaping public opinion.

63. I learned of Peter Kelly’s collection of papers only after he died in 2013, one year after our final interview. And so, unfortunately, I was unable to speak with him directly about the documents and photographs he had saved for sixty years. My interviews with Kelly over Skype took place over a period of five weeks and, during this time, I inquired as to whether he had kept any ephemera, papers, or photos from that period and urged him to share what he could. He promised to send me what he could, and I received seven scanned photographs via email—pictures of Kelly, sometimes with other members of the IPC film unit. Two years later, I reached out to him for permission to include his photos in a publication, and heard back instead from his widow, Flora MacDonald. She shared that her husband had been ill during our interviews (though he had chosen not to tell me at the time) and informed me that he had in fact kept a large collection of papers and photographs related to his years with the IPC film unit. Initially I hoped to visit her home in Toronto to help catalog the materials, but I had to be honest about my limited capacity to undertake the archiving labor while completing my dissertation.

64. Eventually, I assisted MacDonald in establishing a contact at the BP archive, which acquired Kelly’s collection. Initially, and based on my untroubled experience with BP’s archivists, I hoped that the transfer of his papers and photographs there would place the materials in an appropriate, discoverable, and relatively accessible context for future researchers. Regrettably, however, I have learned that the BP archive has recently (as of the time of this book’s publication) placed restrictions on access to records post-1954, according to my correspondence with the current archivist, “due to the increasing complexity, resource implications and dealing with external access requests.” When I began my research in the archive, this restriction had not been in place and I did not foresee its implementation. While archivists at BP facilitated my access to Kelly’s materials in light of my position vis-à-vis their acquisition of the collection, the archive’s decision not to afford other researchers similar access to the materials that have been critical to informing this book remains deeply disconcerting. The lesson here reminds that the politics of the archive echo the same tension that is inherent to pipeline cinema—namely, that what the oil company makes available and possible, in terms of cultural and knowledge production, is ultimately predicated on the whims of its bottom-line-driven agenda.

65. Hales and Slifer, “A Letter from the Middle Eastern Representatives of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Concerning the Import of American Films into Iraq and Their Opinion That Regular Importation Would Make a Substantial Contribution to a Better Understanding by Iraqis of American Life and Americans,” January 14, 1944, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 890G.4061/Motion Pictures/35/PS/HWL, National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, MD (NACP).

66. Quotation taken from the English-language copy of an IPC pamphlet (later translated into Arabic), authored by Peter Kelly. Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 1954, 242486, BP Archive.

67. Sohrabi, One Image, Two Acts.

68. Reporting by Greenpeace and Declassified UK estimates BP profits from Iraq’s Rumaila oil field since the 2003 invasion between hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. Joe Sandler Clarke, “Big Oil's Dirty Secret in Iraq,” Unearthed, September 29, 2023, https://tinyurl.com/3buy75dx; Matt Kennard, “BP Extracted Iraqi Oil Worth £15bn after British Invasion,” Declassified UK, March 22, 2023, https://www.declassifieduk.org/bp -extracted-iraqi-oil-worth-15bn-after-british-invasion/.

69. Anthony Shadid, “In Baghdad Ruins, Remains of a Cultural Bridge,” New York Times, May 21, 2010.

1. “OIL ON THE SCREEN”: THE ORIGINS OF PETROLEUM INDUSTRY FILM USE IN IRAN

1. The company was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company until 1935, at which point it was changed to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). This decision followed Reza Shah Pahlavi’s declaration for international recognition of the country name Iran rather than Persia. In 1954, the AIOC was assumed under its parent company British Petroleum.

2. The oil company spent £2,100 to produce the footage for company officials as a virtual tour of their assets 3,500 miles away in southwestern Iran. See Garth Pedler, “British Petroleum: Their Documentary Films Before 1939,” Classic Images 86 (1982), 44; and “A History of Film in BP,” BP Video Library, 2024, www.bpvideolibrary.com/a_history_of_film_in_bp.

3. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 44. The film was shortened to sixty-five minutes and intertitles inserted throughout in December 1939 for the purpose of company record-keeping, according to the opening titles of the film. This abridged version of the film can be viewed on the BP Video Library website: Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s Operations in Iran, 1921, 1939, www.bpvideolibrary.com/record/513.

4. There were five distinct film productions; however, many of the AIOC’s films were either recut to shorter versions or released under more than one title.

5. Conventions of British documentary production outside of Britain were concurrently being shaped by the Colonial Film Unit (CFU) in Africa from the 1930s to the 1950s. On the early history of the CFU, see Tom Rice, Films for the Colonies: Cinema and the Preservation of the British Empire (University of California Press, 2019).

6. The company classified workers migrating from within the country as “Persians,” irrespective of their provincial origin; see Touraj Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry 1908–1951,” in Working for Oil, ed. Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, and Kaveh Ehsani (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 192, 208.

7. See Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 47–50.

8. These practices were consistent with oil company town planning throughout the Middle East in the early twentieth century. See Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2006); and Mona Damluji, “Petroleum’s Promise: The Neo-Colonial Imaginary of Oil Cities in the Modern Arabian Gulf” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2013), 45–68.

9. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 206.

10. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 208.

11. Quotation from National Archive of Iran, file no. 240025870, cited in Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 209.

12. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 209. Note that Stephanie Cronin’s account says that Iranian workers joined the strike the day after Indian workers received their wage increase; see Cronin, “Popular Politics, the New State and the Birth of the Iranian Working Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike,” Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 5 (September 2010): 699–732.

13. Quotation from Dr. Ghore, “Indian Workers in Persia. Miserable Condition,” Bombay Chronicle, January 10, 1922, British National Archive, F.O. 371/781, cited in Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 210.

14. Cronin, “Popular Politics,” 705; Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 210.

15. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 210

16. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 44. This was also the subject of the early American documentary Grass, filmed in the early 1920s and released by Paramount in 1925. Pedler elaborates, “As a matter of interest, the only other known film activities in Iran about that period are those of the explorers and cinematographers Merian Cooper who, with Ernest B. Schoedsack and Marguerite Harrison, accompanied one of the twice-yearly migrations of the nomadic tribes from the plains to the hills, crossing Bakhtyari country, the torrential River Karun on primitive goatskin floats, and through the pass below Zardeh Kuh, the Persian Alps. This was all released in the Paramount film Grass first presented in the USA by Adolph Zukor and Jesse Laska on March 30, 1925.”

17. The original film can be viewed online in two parts: The Persian Oil Industry: The Story of a Great Enterprise (#1), 1925, https://bpvideolibrary.com/record/14; and The Persian Oil Industry: The Story of a Great Enterprise (#2), 1925, https://bpvideolibrary.com/record/13.

18. On the film’s BP Video Library webpage, the context for the film’s multiple versions is described in the metadata section, citing a company memo dated January 26, 1940. See “The Persian Oil Industry #1 (Mute) (1925),” BP Video Library, 2024, https://bpvideolibrary .com/record/14. During my visit to the BP Archive, the original document was not discoverable/available.

19. The original film can be viewed online: In the Land of the Shah, 1926, www.bpvideo library.com/record/104.

20. Ronald. E. Tritton to Fletcher (Greenpark Productions), “Film on the AIOC,” January 12, 1950, 183091, BP Archive.

21. “A History of Film in BP,” BP Video Library, 2024, www.bpvideolibrary.com/a_history _of_film_in_bp.

22. “Persian Oil Industry #1.”

23. Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 1, The Artisanal Era, 1897–1941 (Duke University Press, 2011), 112, likely referring to mobile cinema vans.

24. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 1:186.

25. “History of Film in BP.”

26. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 1:186.

27. Abbās Bahārlū, “Sinamā-Hāyi Sherkāt-i Naft Dar Ābādān: His-u-Hāl-i Ingilīsī Būdan Dar Junūb-i Iran” [The oil company’s cinema in Abadan: The feeling of being English in South Iran], Sinamā va Adabīyyāt, 2019, 175. Translation provided by Soha Saghazadeh.

28. Bahārlū elaborates, “The goal of Sir John Cadman, the director of APOC, in founding leisure and sports clubs such as Gymkhana was to create a sort of ‘British core’ in oil-rich regions; so that the company’s English employees, through membership and participation in such clubs and participating in social activities, specially sports (and rarely religious activities), preserve their ‘modern ultrademocratic spirit,’ and endure the ‘instability’ and harshness of living far from the homeland.” BP71183, unsigned and undated office note from circa 1926. See Bahārlū, “Sinamā-Hāyi Sherkāt-i Naft Dar Ābādān,” 175.

29. “Persian Oil Industry #1.”

30. Bahārlū, “Sinamā-Hāyi Sherkāt-i Naft Dar Ābādān,” 175.

31. Camron Michael Amin, “Importing ‘Beauty Culture’ into Iran in the 1920s and 1930s: Mass Marketing Individualism in an Age of Anti-Imperialist Sacrifice,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 1 (2004): 87; Mushira Eid, World of Obituaries: Gender Across Cultures and Over Time (Wayne State University Press, 2002), 52.

32. M. Fekri, “Naft-i Junub yā Sirvat-i Milly-i Iran!” [South Oil or Iran’s national wealth!], Ettela’at, September 24, 1928. Translation provided by Soha Saghazadeh.

33. H. Khuzestani, “Kompani-ye Naft-e Jonub” [Southern Oil Company], Ettela’at, October 2, 1928. Translation provided by Soha Saghazadeh. Also cited in Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 1:183–84.

34. J. H. Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 2, The Anglo- Iranian Years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 22.

35. Early Pahlavi rule was marked by widespread reforms of Qajar-era policies. The long-standing debts of the previous regime restricted some of Reza Shah’s modernist ambitions; however, according to Afshin Marashi, Qajar-era indebtedness “led to the Pahlavi state’s resolve to fund its development plans without resorting to loans from foreign banks.” Marashi, “‘Rich Fields in Persia’: Parsi Capital and the Origins of Economic Development in Pahlavi Iran, 1925–1941,” Iranian Studies 56, no. 1 (January 2023): 64.

36. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 213, 202.

37. Kaveh Ehsani, “Disappearing the Workers: How Labor in the Oil Complex Has Been Made Invisible,” in Working for Oil, ed. Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, and Kaveh Ehsani (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 18.

38. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 112–13.

39. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 44. Atabaki points out that during a second visit to Khuzestan in the same year, the Shah declined the company’s invitation to visit the oil installations. The snub was picked up by Shafaq-e Sorkh, a national newspaper founded in 1922 by the journalist and politician Ali Dashti, whose anti-British and nationalist leaning led to the regular publication of pieces that criticized the APOC’s exploitation of Iran’s resources. The paper published commentary on the incident that suggested widespread disdain for the oil company among the local population. See Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 213.

40. The film can be viewed online: Visit of H.I.M. Reza Shah Pahlevi to Khuzistan— November 1928, 1928, www.bpvideolibrary.com/record/8.

41. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 44.

42. Cronin, “Popular Politics,” 705–6.

43. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 131.

44. Cronin, “Popular Politics,” 700.

45. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,” 211–12.

46. Cronin, “Popular Politics,” 702.

47. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 134.

48. Cronin, “Popular Politics,” 705–6; Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 134–35.

49. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 1:183.

50. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 1:168.

51. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 44.

52. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 88–89.

53. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 91.

54. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (Simon & Schuster, 1991), 204–5.

55. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 93–94.

56. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 87–88.

57. Yergin, Prize, 271.

58. Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 111.

59. Sir Arthur Elton, “How We Use Films: In Shell,” Film User, August 1956, 344.

60. Rudmer Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well: Documenting the World of Shell,” in Films That Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 244–46.

61. Rudmer Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid: A History of Shell Films,” in A History of Royal Dutch Shell, ed. Jan Luiten van Zanden (Oxford University Press, 2007), 4:18.

62. Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid,” 17.

63. John Hewitt, “The ‘Nature’ and ‘Art’ of Shell Advertising in the Early 1930s,” Journal of Design History 5, no. 2 (1992): 126.

64. Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well,” 244–46.

65. Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid,” 19.

66. Elton, “How We Use Films,” 344–45.

67. Steven Foxon, “Film Centre (United Kingdom),” in Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, ed. Ian Aitken (Routledge, 2006), 1:412. See also Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor, Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain (British Film Institute, 2019), 88. There is a slight discrepancy regarding the date; Russell and Taylor mention that Elton and Film Centre were first contracted by Shell in 1937; however, according to Foxon, “John Grierson resigned from the GPO in June 1937, noting that the world was expanding and that international organisations were looking in the direction of the documentary. He had seen that there was a real need for an outside body that could guarantee to look after the interests of the sponsors, and, in 1938, he formed a new, independently financed outfit, called Film Centre, to meet that need.”

68. Foxon, “Film Centre,” 412.

69. Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well,” 244–46.

70. Foxon, “Film Centre,” 412–13.

71. Ronald E. Tritton, “How We Use Films: At Anglo-Iranian,” Film User, September 1953, 465; Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid,” 27.

72. Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid,” 25.

73. Foxon, “Film Centre,” 413; also see Elton, “How We Use Films,” 345. Elton claims that the oil company’s ambitious program of film sponsorship gave rise to the first “genuine international documentary film movement.” It would have to be added that this was a movement from above, not below, since it was fundamentally realized as a part of a neocolonial corporate enterprise with a bottom line tied to resource extraction based on exploitative systems of control over labor and the environment.

74. Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid,” 25.

75. For an overview of Shell’s international work, see Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well,” 247; for an extensive discussion of the work of the Burmah-Shell film unit, established in 1954, see Ravi Vasudevan, “‘In India’s Life and Part of It’: Film and Visual Publicity at Burmah-Shell from the 1920s to the 1950s,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

76. A. E. Jeakins, “Filming Round the World: Talk by Sir Arthur Elton,” Cine-Technician 22 (1956): 55.

77. See Patrick Russell and Steven Fox, “Shell-BP: A Dialogue,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).

78. While Western countries had been using Persia as the official country name until 1935, Iran had always been the name used within the country.

79. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

80. “History of Film in BP.”

81. “History of Film in BP.”

82. John Taylor, quoted in Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

83. John Taylor quoted in Naficy, 1:185.

84. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

85. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

86. See discussion of this point in Naficy, 1:164.

87. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

88. The March of Time changed from a three-part format to a single-story format in 1938. Ramírez, “The March of Time in Britain and the International History of Documentary Film,” Film History 32, no. 2 (2020): 2, 8.

89. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

90. “Oil Beneath the Bough,” World Film News, October 1938, 35516, BP Archive.

91. Pedler, “British Petroleum,” 45.

92. Bamberg, History of the British Petroleum Company, 2: 50–62.

93. Shafiee chronicles the company’s strategy for manipulating negotiations around the mutually agreed-upon timeline and process for “Persianization,” and shows how the company used a strategy of limiting all negotiation of labor issues to what she terms “econotechnical” language to minimize any changes that it had feared would be a half-step toward nationalization. She explains that Persianization would occur among skilled staff (in the company’s language) “to the extent that it shall find Persian subjects who possess the requisite competence and experience” and the highest possible “measure of technical efficiency and of economic conduct” was maintained in oil operations. This strategy, she concludes, guaranteed that Persianization would never occur, “claiming that an Iranian worker capable of replacing a British or Indian worker of a higher grade was impossible because of the economic costs to the company.” see Shafiee, Machineries of Oil, 112–13.

94. Atabaki, “Indian Migrant Workers,“ 215–16; Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (Verso, 2011), 107. For a thorough account of the 1946 strike, see Touraj Atabaki, “Chronicle of a Calamitous Strike Foretold: Abadan, July 1946,” in On the Road to Global Labour History, ed. Karl Heinz Roth (Brill, 2017), 93–128.

95. Ronald E. Tritton to A. H. T. Chisholm (AIOC, London), “Film on Abadan,” September 22, 1949, 183091, BP Archive; Tritton, “Film on the AIOC,” January 12, 1950.

96. Ronald E. Tritton to Geoffrey J. Keating (AIOC Information Dept, Teheran), February 6, 1951, 183091, BP Archive.

97. Ronald Tritton, “Film on Company’s Operations,” January 4, 1950, 183091, BP Archive.

98. Ronald E. Tritton to A. H. T. Chisholm (AIOC, London), “Film About Abadan,” March 9, 1949, 183091, BP Archive.

99. Tritton, “Film About Abadan,” March 9, 1949.

100. A. H. T. Chisholm (AIOC, London) to A. H. Hamzavi, Esq. (Imperial Iranian Embassy, London), November 8, 1950, 183091, BP Archive.

101. Ronald E. Tritton to A. H. T. Chisholm (AIOC, London), “Film About Abadan,” March 10, 1949, 183091, BP Archive.

102. Tritton and Chisholm solicited a film treatment from Terry Bishop, a potential director for the project, who proposed a film that featured an Iranian man on a journey across the country encountering individuals who worked for the oil company and learning about the places he was visiting through their work as geologists, doctors, sailors, etc. See Ronald E. Tritton to A. H. T. Chisholm (AIOC, London), “Bishop’s Film,” June 22, 1950, 183091, BP Archive.

103. In his film Pouring Oil over Troubled Water (2023), Nariman Massoumi documents aspects of the preproduction history of the AIOC film, based on the published letters of the Welsh poet and writer Dylan Thomas. The film’s director Ralph Keene invited Thomas to join him in Iran in order to research ideas and locations for the film script. Thomas, however, left the project after returning from Iran and did not write Persian Story. See Paul Ferris, Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters (J. M. Dent, 2000); and Chisholm to Hamzavi, November 8, 1950.

104. According to Maral Jefroudi, based on a report by the U.S. Counselor for Economic Affairs Robert M. Carr, “the strikes in the fields had started as a protest against the reduction in real wages with the cutting off of outstation allowances, while the latter [refinery strikes] were initiated by Abadan Technical Institute students for lower passing marks and improvement in the status of the technical students in comparison with the staff.” Jefroudi, “‘If I Deserve It, It Should Be Paid to Me’: A Social History of Labor in the Iranian Oil Industry (1951–1973)” (PhD diss., Universiteit Leiden, 2017), 305.

105. Jefroudi, “‘If I Deserve It,’” 303–4.

106. Ralph Keene to Ronald E. Tritton, April 14, 1951, 183091, BP Archive.

107. Jefroudi, “‘If I Deserve It,’” 307.

108. Bamberg, History of the British Petroleum Company, 2:457.

109. Persian Story, 1952, www.bpvideolibrary.com/record/403.

110. Audiences totaled over twelve thousand in seven large West End cinemas. See Tritton, “How We Use Films: At Anglo-Iranian,” 465; “The Anglo-Iranian Co.’s Film Show: Past and Present Portrayed to a Great Audience,” Petroleum Times, January 9, 1953, 24–25.

111. Tritton, “How We Use Films: At Anglo-Iranian,” 465.

112. See Mona Damluji, “The Oil City in Focus: The Cinematic Spaces of Abadan in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s Persian Story,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 1 (2013): 75–88.

113. Yergin, Prize, 464; Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 54.

114. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 55, 102.

115. Malcolm Cook, “Full Circle: Useful Animation and the Geography of Petroleum Extraction,” Media+Environment 6, no. 1 (2024).

116. As detailed in chapter 3, BP returned to Iran in the aftermath of the 1953 coup d’état orchestrated by Britain and the United States to remove Mossadegh from power and reinstate British and American influence over oil production there. Also see Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men; and Gregory Brew, “Oil and the US Decision to Overthrow Mosaddeq,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 56, no. 2 (May 2024): 288–94.

2. THE CINEMATIC PIPELINE: OIL INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE PRESTIGE DOCUMENTARY IN IRAQ

1. “Welcome to a New Film User: The Iraq Petroleum Co.,” Film User, January 1953, 47.

2. Michael Clarke, interview by John Legard, audio recording, October 20, 1993, The British Entertainment History Project, https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/michael -clarke.

3. Daniel Silverfarb, “The Revision of Iraq’s Oil Concession, 1949–52,” Middle Eastern Studies 32, no. 1 (1996): 86–87.

4. John Shearman, interview by A. Lawson, audio recording, October 26, 1987, The British Entertainment History Project, https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/john-shearman.

5. Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (Verso, 2011), 147.

6. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba‘thists and Free Officers (Princeton University Press, 1978), 622.

7. Arbella Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), 104–5.

8. For studies of racialized segregation in oil company towns, see, on Abadan and Masjed Soleyman in Iran, Kaveh Ehsani, “Social Engineering and the Contradictions of Modernization in Khuzestan’s Company Towns: A Look at Abadan and Masjed-Soleyman,” International Review of Social History 48 (2003): 361–99; on Saudi Arabia, Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2006); on Ahmadi in Kuwait, Reem Alissa, “The Oil Town of Ahmadi Since 1946,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 1 (May 2013): 41–58; and on Awali in Bahrain, Nelida Fuccaro, “Shaping the Urban Life of Oil in Bahrain,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33, no. 1 (May 2013): 59–74. For a broad analysis of these practices in British oil company town planning, see Mona Damluji, “Petroleum’s Promise: The Neo-Colonial Imaginary of Oil Cities in the Modern Arabian Gulf” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2013), 45–67.

9. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 622. In response to the worker campaign, the company appointed its staff director Mr. Todd to oversee an “Internal Labor Committee.”

10. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 103.

11. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 623. In response to the request, the IPC proposed an increase in cost-of-living allowance but denied increased basic wage and all other demands.

12. Su’ad Khairi, Min Tarikh al-Haraka al-Thawriya al-Mu’asira fi al-Iraq, 1920–1958 [From the history of the contemporary revolutionary movement in Iraq, 1920–1958] (Baghdad, 1975), 150–52, cited in Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, “Labor and National Liberation: The Trade Union Movement in Iraq, 1920–1958,” Arab Studies Quarterly 5, no. 2 (1983): 152.

13. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 624.

14. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 545. The Communist Party and Independent Party together played a fundamental part in organizing the mobilizations.

15. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 551–57; Sluglett and Sluglett, “Labor and National Liberation,” 152.

16. Sluglett and Sluglett, “Labor and National Liberation,” 153.

17. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 625; Sluglett and Sluglett, “Labor and National Liberation,” 154.

18. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 626.

19. Sluglett and Sluglett, “Labor and National Liberation,” 154.

20. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 627.

21. Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 118–19.

22. See Pedro Azara, ed., City of Mirages: Baghdad, from Wright to Venturi (Departament de Composició Arquitectònica, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2008).

23. A History of the Shell Film & Video Unit, 1934 to 1999 (The Good News Press, 1999), 2.

24. Steven Foxon, “Film Centre (United Kingdom),” in Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, ed. Ian Aitken (Routledge, 2006), 1:411.

25. Film Centre was initially established to distance Shell’s film operations from the corporation, and so their identities are sometimes conflated in film histories, with some scholars referring to Film Centre’s work in Iraq as a Shell film unit; however, the IPC operated its own unit and Shell never had a film unit of its own in Iraq.

26. John Shearman, interview by A. Lawson.

27. Rudmer Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well: Documenting the World of Shell,” in Films That Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 247; also see María G. Colmenares, “La Venezuela rural tradicional según la Unidad Fílmica Shell,” IMAGOFAGIA 18 (2021).

28. For a history of Venezuelan politics and oil development, see Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (University of Chicago Press, 1997).

29. Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well,” 247.

30. Available documentation related to this production does not clarify whether Elton first approached the oil company to propose the pipeline film, or whether the company initiated the partnership.

31. Stuart Legg, “Pipeline to the Sea,” January 1952, 242685, BP Archive.

32. Legg, “Pipeline to the Sea,” 12.

33. Clarke, interview by John Legard.

34. Peter Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 30, 2012.

35. Michael Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” Iraq Petroleum, December 1952, 16.

36. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 16.

37. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 14, 16.

38. Peter Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 23, 2012.

39. Kelly, interview, April 30, 2012.

40. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 14–16.

41. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 16–17, 14.

42. Kelly, interview, April 30, 2012.

43. Bet-Shlimon notes, “The company also had its own police force and airplane fleet. It operated private flights to other company sites, including [Kirkuk] Baghdad, Basra and other sites outside Iraq. Employees could book seats on these flights for official purposes or for their family members’ leisure.” Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 102.

44. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 16.

45. Clarke, interview by John Legard.

46. According to film historian Brian Jacobson, a French version of the commentary was also recorded and distributed to the IPC’s shareholding partner (CFP) in France.

47. Jabra Ibrahim Jabra would eventually become a world-renowned literary figure. Throughout his career he continued to work with the IPC, as is mentioned in the introduction and discussed in depth in chapter 3 of this book. See Jabra, Princesses’ Street, trans. Issa J. Boullata (University of Arkansas Press, 2005).

48. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 18.

49. Clarke, interview by John Legard.

50. The film was exhibited theatrically in Iraqi cities, and nontheatrically in Kirkuk’s oil field and various pumping stations. “Welcome to a New Film User,” 47.

51. “Wahdat al-Aflam fi Sharikat Naft al-Iraq” [The film unit of the Iraq Petroleum Company], Ahl Al Naft, November 1957, 36.

52. See Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Duke University Press, 2011).

53. Tom Conley, in his pathbreaking work on the “strangely coextensive” relationship between cinema and cartography, argues, “A film, like a topographic projection, can be understood as an image that locates and patterns the imagination of its spectators. When it takes hold, a film encourages its public to think of the world in concert with its own articulation of space.” Conley, Cartographic Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 1. Attending to the multiple ways that documentary and cartography “influence, mold, and inhabit one another,” Janet Walker analyzes two oil films shot on location in the Louisiana Gulf Coast to demonstrate “the extractive kinship between media and oil” in the land- and waterscapes of oil and gas extraction where films are fiscally sponsored, enabled, and shaped by powerful oil companies. See Janet Walker, “Media Mapping and Oil Extraction: A Louisiana Story,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 7, no. 2 (2018): 244–45.

54. Cartographers Sébastien Caquard and D. R. Fraser Taylor characterize the airborne camera lens as “a cartographic tool that can tell all kinds of geospatial stories.” Caquard and Taylor, “What Is Cinematic Cartography?,” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 1 (February 2009): 6. Teresa Castro classifies aerial views captured by the motion picture camera as “cartographic shape[s]” that structure spatial knowledge akin to the descriptive art of cartography. Castro describes “the double kineticism of flight and film” as generative of a distinct cinematographic experience of the world that moves fluidly across space and time from the perspective of a removed and omniscient “God’s eye.” Castro, “Cinema’s Mapping Impulse: Questioning Visual Culture,” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 1 (February 2009): 14.

55. All quotations taken from the film’s commentary in this section are based upon the author’s transcription. The first nineteen minutes of The Third River can be viewed online, though it is not clear why the film was not digitized in its entirety: The Third River, 1952, https://bpvideolibrary.com/record/385.

56. Sébastien Caquard, “Foreshadowing Contemporary Digital Cartography: A Historical Review of Cinematic Maps in Films,” The Cartographic Journal 46, no. 1 (February 2009): 46–47. Malcom Cook’s study of the AIOC animated film Full Circle (1953) demonstrates how animation was used to produce a “cartographic imagination . . . at the service of petroleum extraction.”

57. Malcolm Cook, “Full Circle: Useful Animation and the Geography of Petroleum Extraction,” Media+Environment 6, no. 1 (2024). Also see Priya Jaikumar, “An ‘Accurate Imagination’: Place, Map, and Archive as Spatial Objects of Film History,” in Empire and Film, ed. Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (British Film Institute, 2011), 172–76; Malcolm builds upon Jaikumar’s study of British colonial films from the 1930s, in which she argues that animated maps selectively construct a representation of existing space that relies more on imagination than scientific accuracy.

58. According to historian Natasha Guiti Pesaran, “The IPC’s new 16-inch line 271 had been laid up to 50 miles from Haifa when construction was halted in October 1948. The IPC transferred its personnel and head offices to Tripoli.” Pesaran, “The Iraq-Mediterranean Pipelines and Power in the Middle East, 1925–1973” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2022), 113.

59. Initially, British forces developed the capacity to employ aerial photography as a source of raw data for creating maps of North Africa and the Middle East to provide significant advantages during desert combat. Caren Kaplan explains, “Aerial reconnaissance transformed the terrain from an inhospitable and confusing space to one ideal for the purposes of war—now the British could penetrate zones that had been considered previously to be inaccessible or hidden. But most importantly, the perspective from the air made ‘Mesopotamia’ viewable as a coherent map and thus imaginable as a region to be controlled.” Kaplan, Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above (Duke University Press, 2018), 150–58.

60. Kaplan, Aerial Aftermaths, 160, 179.

61. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 102.

62. Conley, Cartographic Cinema, 2.

63. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 18.

64. This scripting mirrors the narrative arc of Full Circle, the animated film being produced contemporaneously by the AIOC in which, Malcolm Cook shows, “the cartographic imagination of animation finds its fullest expression as the film aims not only to represent existing places but also to envision the future modernity that oil will facilitate.” Cook, “Full Circle.”

65. Circulation of the IPC’s monthly magazines reached forty-six thousand per issue for its Arabic issues of Ahl al Naft and twenty thousand per issue for its English-language counterpart Iraq Petroleum. Tom Piggot, “‘Iraq Petroleum’ Makes Its Bow,” Iraq Petroleum, August 1951, 5.

66. Arthur Elton, “The Use of Films and Television by the Oil Consortium in Iran: British Petroleum Co. Ltd.,” April 1, 1958, 6, 193631, BP Archive. Elton authored this report as a consultant for the Oil Consortium in Iran in 1958 (likely before the July revolution in Iraq), making recommendations that are clearly based upon his experiences with IPC and Shell film units.

67. Piggot, “Iraq Petroleum Makes Its Bow,” 5.

68. “The Future of Public Relations Within the I.P.C. Group of Companies,” March 25, 1966, 2–3, 162027, BP Archive.

3. OIL’S CULTURAL WORKERS: TEXTURES AND TENSIONS OF THE IRAQ PETROLEUM COMPANY FILM UNIT

1. Michael Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” Iraq Petroleum, December 1952, 16.

2. Clarke, “Making ‘The Third River,’” 18.

3. Peter Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 1954, 242486, BP Archive, 1.

4. When documented in available archival sources, original Arabic-language film titles will be given; otherwise, the original English-language (UK) titles or English translations found in archival sources to refer to Arabic-language films will be provided. Most IPC films were made with Arabic commentary and titles, which notably did not account for Kurdish audience members and other ethnic minority communities not fluent or literate in Arabic in the northern region, where the IPC regularly screened its films. For an account of the distribution and reception of Arabic-language films in Iraq, see chapter 4.

5. The company initially used training films in Arabic to instruct employees about industrial worker safety protocols with titles such as “Eyes,” “Tools,” and “Lifting.” Other films described the fundamental processes of oil production. In 1958, the IPC sponsored a series of technical training films for its employees, produced by Film Centre and directed by the British filmmaker John Armstrong, titled The Study of Oil. Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 2–3; “Iraq Petroleum Company,” British Film Institute, 2004, http://bidweb.bfi.org.uk/web-reports /titles/titles.jsp?query=295360, accessed December 6, 2008, copy in author’s possession.

6. The IPC film unit made two documentaries, Fire at Dukhan (1954) and Oil of Iraq (1954), in addition to the three IPC prestige films that were produced on commission by British filmmakers outside the unit in Baghdad: The Third River (Film Centre, 1952), Ageless Iraq (British Pathé, 1954), and Rivers of Time (Film Centre, 1957). See Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 3.

7. “The Future of Public Relations Within the I.P.C. Group of Companies,” March 25, 1966, 162027, BP Archive, 2–3.

8. Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 2.

9. The IPC’s cultural work entailed the contributions of Iraqi filmmakers as well as photographers and other visual artists. The early career of the Iraqi photographer Latif al Ani, for example, had its origins in his employment in the IPC photography unit. See Jala Makhzoumi and Mona Damluji, “Baghdad Through Latif Al-Ani’s Lens,” Jadaliyya, April 18, 2016, www.jadaliyya.com/Details/33181; and Tamara Chalabi, Shwan Ibrahim Taha, and Morad Montazami, Latif Al Ani (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2017).

10. Media labor studies scholars have drawn focus to global conditions of worker precarity in the film industry. See Michael Curtin and Kevin Sanson, eds., Precarious Creativity: Global Media, Local Labor (University of California Press, 2016).

11. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba‘thists and Free Officers (Princeton University Press, 1978), 34.

12. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 34.

13. John Shearman, interview by Alan Lawson, audio recording, October 26, 1987, The British Entertainment History Project, https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/john -shearman.

14. “Welcome to a New Film User: The Iraq Petroleum Co.,” Film User, January 1953, 47.

15. Michael Clarke, interview by John Legard, audio recording, October 20, 1993, The British Entertainment History Project, https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/michael -clarke.

16. Shearman, interview by Alan Lawson.

17. Rudmer Canjels, “Films from Beyond the Well: Documenting the World of Shell,” in Films That Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 247.

18. Peter Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 30, 2012.

19. In 1954, Jack Percival began training Latif al Ani as a second member of the IPC photography unit. Al Ani’s documentary photographs, held by the Arab Image Foundation, comprise one of the most extensive and celebrated collections depicting mid-century Iraq. See Makhzoumi and Damluji, “Baghdad Through Latif Al-Ani’s Lens”; and Chalabi et al., Latif Al Ani.

20. Jack Percival to Peter Kelly, August 23, 1952, 242494, BP Archive.

21. “Housing of Film Centre Ltd Personnel,” June 12, 1955, 161762, BP Archive, 2.

22. Peter Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 23, 2012.

23. Karim Korine, “The Thin Man with the Fat Idea,” Iraq Times, April 26, 1947, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 890G.4061/MP/5-547, National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, MD (NACP).

24. ʿAlīyā wa ʿIsām was an Egyptian coproduction and Layla fi al-Iraq a Lebanese coproduction. See Shakir Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien: Histoire, infrastructure, filmographie, 1945–1985 (L’Harmattan, 1986), 162; and Foreign Service of the U.S.A., “Motion Pictures–Entertainment, 35 MM—Iraq, July 1, 1949 to December 31, 1949,” April 20, 1950, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/4-2050, NACP.

25. Edward S. Crocker, “Synthesis of Four Cinema Reports into One That Covers Developments in Iraqi Film for 1950,” June 18, 1951, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/6-1851, NACP.

26. Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 23, 2012.

27. “Yahyeh Faiq (1913–1983),” elCinema, accessed December 10, 2024, https://elcinema .com/person/1071293; Muhamad Jāsim, “Yahya Fā’iq Āhd Ā’amda al-Masrih wa āl-Sīnamā fī al-’Irāq” [Yahyeh Faiq recalls one of the pillars of theater and cinema in Iraq], Al Mada, February 22, 2020, https://almadapaper.net//view.php?cat=224855.

28. According to Faiq’s recollections, his film was protested and eventually banned in Iraq because it was shot on location in Shiite shrines and excluded Sunni and Sufi representation. Jāsim, “Yahya Fā’iq Āhd Ā’amda al-Masrih wa āl-Sīnamā fī al-’Irāq.”

29. Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 23, 2012. After his work on The Third River and prior to his employment with the IPC film unit, Mejid had created Iraq’s first popular radio show for children and he became known by the moniker “Amu Kerim,” which stuck with him over the years. Before joining the unit, he also spent time abroad, studying cinematography at Syracuse University; see Ala Fa’ik, Facebook, August 14, 2012, www .facebook.com/photo?fbid=10151342247907729&set=a.10151189272842729.

30. “Yahyeh Faiq (1913–1983)”; Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 164.

31. Muhammad Shukri Jameel, interview by Mona Damluji, January 25, 2012.

32. Abdul Latif Saleh to Peter Kelly, May 8, 1957, 242494, BP Archive; Kadhim al-Etri, “Mudhakkirāt Ākher Ābāʾ al-Mūntāj al-Mansiyyīn” [Memoirs of the last forgotten montage fathers], Al Sabah, August 20, 2019, https://alsabaah.iq/12836-.html; “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, April 30, 1953.

33. Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 30, 2012; Shearman, interview by Alan Lawson.

34. “Standing Orders Camera Department Stock Levels—Section 5,” February 1, 1954, 242479, BP Archive, 2–3.

35. Peter Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, May 7, 2012.

36. Abdul Latif Saleh to Peter Kelly, May 8, 1957, 242494, BP Archive. Saleh typed many of his personal correspondences with Kelly on a typewriter. As a result, his letters include numerous typos, grammatical errors, and omissions, which imply that act of typing the letters in English (Saleh’s second language after Arabic) was presumably a time-consuming and not insignificant effort and thus a reflection of his strong desire not only to remain in regular communication with but also to impress his former supervisor with such efforts.

37. Abdul Latif Saleh to Peter Kelly, April 14, 1957, 242494, BP Archive.

38. Abdul Latif Saleh to Peter Kelly, n.d., 242494, BP Archive.

39. Saleh to Peter Kelly, April 14, 1957.

40. John Shearman to Peter Kelly, March 21, 1957, 242494, BP Archive.

41. Abdul Latif Saleh to Peter Kelly, December 16, 1957, 242494, BP Archive.

42. Biladuna is an alternate transliteration of Beladuna that was used more often by Arabic speakers during its production years. Mohammed Shukri Jameel, “Directing a Documentary in England,” Iraq Petroleum, October 1958, 32.

43. Jameel, “Directing a Documentary,” 32.

44. Saleh to Peter Kelly, December 16, 1957.

45. Jamil, interview by Mona Damluji.

46. Quotations taken from the original English-language copy authored by Peter Kelly, which was later translated into Arabic for the final version of the pamphlet that was distributed in Iraq (translator unknown). Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 2.

47. Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 1.

48. Kelly, interview by Mona Damluji, April 30, 2012; Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 1.

49. Douglas Gordon, Shell Films: The First Sixty Years (Shell Film and Video Unit, 1994).

50. Jamil, interview by Mona Damluji. During this time, as is well known, Bashir’s career was taking off: recording in Istanbul and Beirut, accompanying the world-renowned singer Fairuz, and teaching at colleges of music in Beirut and Baghdad.

51. Beladuna No. 4 (Iraq Petroleum Company, 1954). A viewing copy of the film is held by the British Film Institute. Viewing copies of the cine-magazine are limited to episodes no. 4, 8, and 10.

52. Shearman, interview by Alan Lawson.

53. Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 1.

54. Dale J. Stahl, “The Two Rivers: Water, Development and Politics in the Tigris- Euphrates Basin, 1920–1975” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2014), 131.

55. “Yahyeh Faiq (1913–1983)”; Ala Fa’ik, Facebook.

56. Beladuna No. 8: Munqith al-Iraq [The savior of Iraq] (Iraq Petroleum Company, 1954). A viewing copy of the film is held by the British Film Institute.

57. The author has been unable to locate a complete version of the original poem; however, the lines of this poem retain the pattern of a poem that al-Jawahiri penned in 1947, which was adopted in 2012 for Iraq’s national anthem. See Al-Sumaria, July 13, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/mcsxctha.

58. Beladuna No. 8. Translation provided by Namir Damluji.

59. Sami Zubaida, “Al-Jawâhîrî: Between Patronage and Revolution,” Revue Des Mondes Musulmans et de La Méditerranée, no. 117–18 (July 2007): 81–98. Zubaida elaborates on this point: “The paradox for students of his work and career is that this revolutionary, perpetually angry poet, has from time to time enjoyed, sometimes sought, the patronage of kings, presidents and even ‘feudal’ shaykhs. These episodes, however, always ended with angry outbursts against these patrons which reversed any advantage he may have acquired. Then he would atone (in the eyes of his revolutionary friends) with renewed and even fiercer attacks on the authorities, the rulers, the rich, the imperialists and so on.” Al-Jawahiri maintained a complex relationship with the Hashemite regime, which he openly opposed in his poems and public recitations, especially during the Wathba, but then later accepted patronage from in subsequent years. See also Kevin M. Jones, The Dangers of Poetry: Culture, Politics, and Revolution in Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2020), 1.

60. For more about al-Mala’ika’s biography and work, see Emily Drumsta, ed., Revolt Against the Sun: The Selected Poetry of Nazik al-Mala’ika: A Bilingual Reader (Saqi, 2020).

61. ʾAyna naʿdū wa-huwa qad laffā yadayhi / hawla ʾaktāfi al-madīnah? / ʾInnahu yaʿmalu fī butʾin wa-hazmin wa-sakīnah / Sākiban min shafatayhi / qubalan tīniyyatan ghattat marāʿīnā al-hazīnah. Translation provided by Namir Damluji. To read the original Arabic poem in its entirety, see Al-Diwan, accessed January 10, 2025, www.aldiwan.net /poem99800.html.

62. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 33–34.

63. Stahl, “The Two Rivers,” 136.

64. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 33–34.

65. Kelly, “Films of Iraq,” 1, 3.

66. Shearman to Peter Kelly, March 21, 1957.

67. “Future of Public Relations,” 2, 4. During this period, the Hashemite monarchy relied primarily upon Baghdad Radio and Baghdad Television as state-run broadcasting outlets to directly promote national development projects and narratives of progress. However, as the historian Sara Farhan writes, the project “required the expertise of prominent radio specialists, writers, actors, and performers” who—like members of the IPC film unit—came from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and were often critical of the Hashemite regime’s undemocratic policies that favored landowning and elite citizens in Iraq. Baghdad Television employees found ways to express their political grievances both tacitly and explicitly—transgressions that were permitted because they could enforce the idea that government-controlled media was still, in Farhan’s words, as “a platform for various and often-competing visions of Iraq.” The IPC’s film program, relatively speaking, allowed little room for significant divergence from the company’s adherence to a government agenda despite the diverse cadre of Iraqi contributors that comprised its ranks. Farhan, “‘Huna Baghdad’: Competing Visions in Television Programming in Monarchic Iraq,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 2 (March 2020): 300.

68. “Worldwide Oil Scramble Is Developing,” The Oil and Gas Journal 54, no. 80 (November 12, 1956): 122; also see Wm. Roger Louis, “Palestine and the Consequences of the Suez Crisis, 1957–67,” in Transformed Landscapes, ed. Camille Mansour and Leila Fawaz (American University in Cairo Press, 2009), 273–98.

69. “Line Repair Approved,” The Oil and Gas Journal 55, no. 10 (March 11, 1957): 114.

70. Shearman to Peter Kelly.

71. According to Saleh, annual leave amounted to six days. Saleh to Peter Kelly, n.d.

72. Albert Yousef Andrews to Peter Kelly, September 10, 1956, 242494, BP Archive.

73. Albert Yousef Andrews to Peter Kelly, April 28, 1957, 242494, BP Archive.

74. Elizabeth Bishop, “Politics of Cinema in Hashemite Iraq,” Oriente Moderno 93, no. 1 (2013): 115. The USIS operated in at least eighty countries; see Yuka Tsuchiya, “The Atoms for Peace USIS Films: Spreading the Gospel of the ‘Blessing’ of Atomic Energy in the Early Cold War Era,” International Journal of Korean History 19, no. 2 (2014): 107.

75. Saleh to Peter Kelly, May 8, 1957. By 1959 ID 120 was approximately equivalent to US$336.

76. Saleh to Peter Kelly, December 16, 1957.

77. Saleh to Peter Kelly, n.d.

78. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 765–66, 764.

79. The Suez Canal was French and British owned and operated since 1869.

80. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 776, 766–77.

81. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 800–802, 805.

82. Arbella Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), 136–37.

83. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 807.

84. Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (I. B. Tauris, 2001), 76; Batatu, Old Social Classes, 955.

85. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 835–40, 922–93, 942.

86. According to historian Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Qasim’s position was informed by a comparative study of export taxes done by Iraq’s Oil Ministry that determined the IPC was underpaying for oil exports from one of its terminals. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2021), 78.

87. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 78–79.

88. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 90.

89. The law further stipulated that foreign companies must acquire new leases to gain access to developing oil in these areas, and work with the National Oil Company. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 93. Also see Michael E. Brown, “The Nationalization of the Iraqi Petroleum Company,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 10, no. 1 (1979): 107–24.

90. Sluglett and Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958, 78; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 161.

91. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 157.

92. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 137.

93. Kadhim al-Etri, “Al-Fannān Kāzim al-ʿAtrī wa-Safahāt min Tārīkh al-Sīnimā fī al-ʿIrāq” [The artist Kadhim al-Etri and pages from Iraq’s cinematic history], interview by Nabil al-Haydari, September 18, 2010, accessed May 6, 2022, www.iraqhurr.org/a/25672640 .html. Transcript in possession of the author. Translation provided by Gehad Abaza.

94. Abdul Latif Saleh to Peter Kelly, December 14, 1958, 242494, BP Archive.

95. Albert Yousef Andrews to Peter Kelly, February 2, 1960, 242494, BP Archive.

96. “Future of Public Relations,” 5.

97. al-Etri, “Al-Fannān Kāzim al-ʿAtrī wa-Safahāt min Tārīkh al-Sīnimā fī al-ʿIrāq.” In my conversation with the British filmmaker Derek Williams (who worked on numerous BP films over the course of his career), he recalled that, when he met his colleague (and the former Film Centre representative in Iraq) Derek Armstrong at a dinner party years after the 1958 Revolution, he learned from him that the IPC film unit was “ordered by the new regime to go through all the films we made about Iraq,” including the cine-magazine, and “every mention of the king’s name and every picture of the king had to be excised from the whole film library.” Derek Williams, interview by Mona Damluji, September 5, 2011.

98. al-Etri, “Mudhakkirāt Ākher Ābāʾ al-Mūntāj al-Mansiyyīn.”

99. Staff in London were maintained for the purpose of gathering press clippings to monitor and assess the evolving political circumstances for the IPC in the Republic of Iraq. “Future of Public Relations,” 6.

100. According to Kadhim al-Etri in his interview with Nabil al-Haydari, the unit produced a series of seventeen short films called “Iraq’s Wells” in addition to newsreels. al-Etri, “Al-Fannān Kāzim al-ʿAtrī wa-Safahāt min Tārīkh al-Sīnimā fī al-ʿIrāq”; al-Etri, “Mudhakkirāt Ākher Ābāʾ al-Mūntāj al-Mansiyyīn.”

101. al-Etri, “Mudhakkirāt Ākher Ābāʾ al-Mūntāj al-Mansiyyīn.”

102. al-Etri, “Al-Fannān Kāzim al-ʿAtrī wa-Safahāt min Tārīkh al-Sīnimā fī al-ʿIrāq”; al-Etri, “Mudhakkirāt Ākher Ābāʾ al-Mūntāj al-Mansiyyīn.” Also see “Shakir Nouri and the General Establishment for Cinema and Theatre,” in Aspects of the Irakian [sic] Cinema (Iraqi Cinematic Bureau, n.d.), 10.

103. Nouri et al., Aspects of the Irakian Cinema, 10; Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 61.

104. Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 172–73.

105. Ziad Abdullah, “Majid Kamel,” Al-Akhbar, June 18, 2010, https://al-akhbar.com /Archive_People/110791.

106. In 1963, Kamel went to Germany, working in television there for several years until the Ba‘th government summoned him to join the GOCT again in 1971. In an interview with Ziad Abdullah, Kamel retrospectively described it as a hopeful period, but said that ultimately hopes were dashed with Saddam Hussein’s ascendency. Abdullah, “Majid Kamel.”

107. The U.S. State Department insisted, at the time, that “the answer has to come from within Iraq,” and “change is estimated as most likely to produce another strongly nationalistic government, but with a more balanced foreign policy.” On the evening of October 1959, a Ba‘thist gunman had made an unsuccessful attempt at assassinating Qasim. The President interpreted this as an act of desperation and sign of weakness, further confirmed by the breaking of internal Ba‘th ranks in 1961. According to Hanna Batatu, his failure to perceive the threat posed by the Ba‘th and insistence instead on dismantling the Communist Party’s organizational capacity ultimately exposed his vulnerabilities and led to his demise. For a thorough examination of the role of the United States and Britain’s views and actions related to the 1963 coup see Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 93–109 (quotation in text taken from p. 93, referencing a June 1962 memorandum to McGeorge Bundy at the State Department). Also see Batatu, Old Social Classes, 931, 965.

108. Batatu, Old Social Classes, 974–82.

109. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 108.

110. Julius B. Edwardes, “Increased Information Activity in Iraq,” November 22, 1965, 163901, BP Archive.

111. Edwardes, “Increased Information Activity.”

112. Sinclair Road wrote the commentary for Rivers of Time (1957), sponsored by the IPC and produced by Film Centre. Coming out of the British Documentary Film Movement, Road was a central figure alongside Elton at Film Centre and contributed to Paul Rotha’s 1952 book Documentary Film: The Use of the Film Medium to Interpret Creatively and in Social Terms the Life of the People as It Exists in Reality (Faber and Faber).

113. Sinclair Road, “Information Activity in Iraq,” November 26, 1965, 163901, BP Archive.

114. Edwardes, “Increased Information Activity”; Road, “Information Activity.”

115. According to IPC public relations office records, in 1957, Iraq Petroleum had a circulation of thirty-two thousand monthly copies and Ahl al-Naft forty thousand. “Estimated Public Relations Expenditure All Areas 1957,” March 21, 1966, 162027, BP Archive.

116. “Future of Public Relations,” 5.

117. Issa J. Boullata, “Living with the Tigress and the Muses: An Essay on Jabra Ibrahim Jabra,” World Literature Today 75, no. 2 (2001): 214–15.

118. For a study of Al Amiloon Fil Naft including visual analysis of the artwork featured on its covers, see Tiffany Floyd, “Floating on Oil and Antiquities: Iraq Petroleum, Al Amiloon Fil Naft and Iraqi Cultural Modernism,” Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1 (March 2021): 85–101. For a history of Arabic-language oil industry magazines after oil nationalization in Iraq and other Arab countries, see Laleh Khalili, “Crude Knowledge: Petro-Periodicals and Resource Sovereignty,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 56, no. 3 (2024): 446–64. Khalili documents the career trajectory of Abd al-Rahman Munif, (like Jabra) a major literary figure in the Arab world, as the inaugural editor of Al Naft wa al Tanmiyya (Oil and Development) in October 1975. The magazine’s publication marked the complete transfer of all IPC holdings to the Iraqi government, and in the first issue explains that its audience consists of nonspecialist “Iraqi and Arab citizens who want to understand the political situation around oil [ . . . ] so they can participate in the politics of oil and its utilisation for development and progress.” “Why Oil and Development?,” Al Naft wa al Tanmiyya, December 1975, 7, cited in Khalili, “Crude Knowledge.”

119. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, “Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s Suitcase: Carrying Modernism and Exile across Borders from Palestine into Iraq,” Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 17, no. 1 (March 2023): 67–88.

120. Floyd, “Floating on Oil and Antiquities,” 90.

121. Edwardes, “Increased Information Activity.”

122. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 166.

123. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 205.

124. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 168.

125. Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard, Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema, 2nd ed. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), 255.

126. Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 206–10.

127. Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 165, 172–73, 177–79.

128. Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 33.

129. Nouri, À la recherche du cinéma irakien, 185.

130. Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Paranoid Style, 90.

131. Gregory Brew, “Oil and the US Decision to Overthrow Mosaddeq,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 56, no. 2 (May 2024): 288–94. According to journalist and political scientist Steven Kinzer’s account, initially President Harry Truman refused on the basis that a coup would undermine Iran’s democratically elected government. Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, revised ed. (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 3.

132. Arthur Elton, “The Use of Films and Television by the Oil Consortium in Iran” (British Petroleum Co. Ltd., 1958), 193631, BP Archive, i.

133. Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” ii, 11–14.

134. Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” 5–6.

135. Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” 7–8, 11.

136. Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” 6.

137. Elton justifies his argument in favor of contracting “indigenous film units” rather than overseas film units by pointing out that the latter would necessitate hiring additional expatriate staff and the existing job classification system would likely prevent adequate compensation them. Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” 19.

138. Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” 19.

139. In an obituary published in The Guardian, the journalist Trevor Mostyn recalls that in 1951, during a preproduction visit to Tehran to write the script of Persian Story, Golestan met with the producer/director Ralph Keene (of Greenpark Productions) and the poet Dylan Thomas, who had initially been commissioned as a writer for the film. Mostyn, “Ebrahim Golestan Obituary,” The Guardian, September 24, 2023, www.theguardian.com /film/2023/sep/24/ebrahim-golestan-obituary.

140. In an interview with Parviz Jahed, Golestan recalls that the company denied his attempt to negotiate a salary increase due to employment laws that prevented them from paying him more. Jahed, Neveshtan Bā Durbin: Ru Dar Ru Bā Ebrahim Golestan [Writing with camera: Face to face with Ebrahim Golestan] (Nashr e Akhtaran, Tehran, 2015), 120–21, translation provided by Soha Saghazadeh; Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 2, The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Duke University Press, 2011), 77–78.

141. Jahed, Neveshtan Bā Durbin, 120–21. Naficy mentions that the debts were paid within one year. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:78.

142. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:78, 81.

143. Shearman, interview by Alan Lawson. Elton established a contract between the Consortium and Film Centre, and appointed Shearman as the “experienced Film Consultant/Producer to help plan the film and TV programs and to ensure that each is shaped to its PR purpose” that he had recommended in his report. See Elton, “Use of Films and Television,” 22.

144. For a study of flows of USIS films and film officers between Iran and Iraq during the 1950s, see Hadi Gharabaghi, “Documentary Diplomacy and Audiovisual Modernization: A Cold War Genealogy of Arab Cinema During the 1950s Through American Declassified Archives,” in Cinema of the Arab World, ed. Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard (Springer International Publishing, 2020), 29–31.

145. Shearman, interview by Alan Lawson.

146. Jahed, Neveshtan Bā Durbin, 22, 156.

147. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:76, 79–80.

148. See Roya Khoshnevis, “Crude Oil and Its False Promises of Modernization: Petroleum Encounters in Modern Iranian Fiction” (Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2021), 121; Negar Mottahedeh, “Crude Extractions: The Voice in Iranian Cinema,” in Locating the Voice in Film: Critical Approaches and Global Practices, ed. Tom Whittaker and Sarah Wright (Oxford University Press, 2017), 227–28.

149. For an examination of Iranian oil cinema aesthetics, see Yek Tasveer, Do Bardasht (One Image, Two Acts), dir. Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020.

150. Mottahedeh, “Crude Extractions,” 236–37; Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:81.

151. Naficy, Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:88–89.

152. Hamid Dabashi, Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema (Mage, 2023), 75.

153. Dabashi, Masters & Masterpieces, 78.

154. Jahed, Neveshtan Bā Durbin, 66, 126–27.

155. Mostyn, “Ebrahim Golestan Obituary.”

4. AUDIENCES OF OIL: FILM EXHIBITION ON THE PIPELINE

1. Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2009), 88, 91.

2. Pelle V. Olsen, “Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen and the Archives of Leisure,” Regards 26 (2021): 130.

3. “A Letter from the Middle Eastern Representatives of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Concerning the Import of American Films into Iraq and Their Opinion That Regular Importation Would Make a Substantial Contribution to a Better Understanding by Iraqis of American Life and Americans” (enclosed document), January 14, 1944, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 890G.4061/Motion Pictures/35/PS/HWL, National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, MD (NACP); Philip W. Ireland, “Motion Pictures–Iraq,” October 13, 1954, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/5-2253, NACP.

4. Jacob M. Landau, Studies in the Arab Theater and Cinema (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), 175.

5. Elizabeth Bishop, “Politics of Cinema in Hashemite Iraq,” Oriente Moderno 93, no. 1 (2013): 106.

6. Ireland, “Motion Pictures–Iraq.”

7. Philip W. Ireland, “Basic Report on Iraqi Film Industry,” June 26, 1952, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/6-2652, NACP.

8. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 115–16; Hadi Gharabaghi, “Documentary Diplomacy and Audiovisual Modernization: A Cold War Genealogy of Arab Cinema During the 1950s Through American Declassified Archives,” in Cinema of the Arab World, ed. Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard (Springer, 2020), 28–30; Film Centre, The Use of Mobile Cinema and Radio Vans in Fundamental Education (UNESCO, 1949), 25.

9. “Welcome to a New Film User: The Iraq Petroleum Co.,” Film User, January 1953, 47.

10. One Image, Two Acts, dir. Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020.

11. Arbella Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), 108–9. Bet-Shlimon notes that as of 1958 it was unclear whether the law had been enforced.

12. Bet-Shlimon, City of Black Gold, 90.

13. “Letter from the Middle Eastern Representatives.”

14. By 1952, the U.S. Information Service (USIS) and the British embassy in Baghdad owned most of the country’s 16mm projectors (USIS owned ten, two of which were fixed to mobile film vans, and the British embassy owned fifteen, with eight mobile units). These agencies used 16mm projection to screen educational films throughout Iraq. See Ireland, “Basic Report.”

15. Edmund J. Doresz, “Motion Pictures Visual Education and 16 MM Equipment,” May 6, 1950, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/5-650, NACP.

16. Haidee Wasson, Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture (University of California Press, 2020), 150.

17. “Oil Companies Active Film Sponsors,” Business Screen 11, no. 6 (1950): 27, quoted in Gregory A. Waller, “The American Petroleum Institute: Sponsored Motion Pictures in the Service of Public Relations,” in Petrocinema: Sponsored Film and the Oil Industry, ed. Marina Dahlquist and Patrick Vonderau (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 136.

18. Edward S. Crocker, “16 MM Theatrical Motion Pictures–Iraq,” April 18, 1950, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/4-1850, NACP; Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 102.

19. “New Cinema for Kirkuk Fields,” Iraq Petroleum, November 1953, 39.

20. For more on the development of 16mm exhibition in the United States, its uses during the 1940s in the context of military use during World War II, and its commercial applications thereafter, see Haidee Wasson, “Protocols of Portability,” Film History: An International Journal 25, no. 1 (2013): 236–47; and Wasson, Everyday Movies, 115–17.

21. Wasson, Everyday Movies, 156.

22. “Letter from the Middle Eastern Representatives.”

23. In 1943 the British Embassy had also experimented with a cinema “showboat” to travel to remote villages on the Tigris River; see Paul Fletcher, “British Public Relations Office Takes Moving Pictures to Remote Villages by Boat,” September 9, 1943, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 890G.4061/Motion Pictures/31/PS/JB, NACP.

24. Alec Stirling, “Bringing Cinema to Southern Iraq, 1952,” in The Arabists of Shemlan: MECAS Memoirs, 1944–1978, ed. Paul Tempest (Stacey International, 2006), 1:66–67, cited in Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 115.

25. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 115–18, quotation on 118.

26. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 102; “New Cinema at Baiji,” 42.

27. “Iraq Petroleum Company’s Progress in 1952,” Petroleum Times, August 21, 1953.

28. Mosul had four cinemas at the time—King Ghazi, Al-Hamra, New Al-Hamra, and Hollywood—that could seat audience sizes between 500 and 850 as well as three open-air cinemas with seating capacity for audiences as large as 1,000. United States Embassy in Baghdad, “Motion Pictures–Theater Equipment–Iraq,” April 28, 1950, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/4-1850, NACP.

29. “Iraq Petroleum Company’s Progress in 1952.”

30. “New Cinema at Baiji,” Iraq Petroleum, May 1953, 42.

31. “New Cinema for Kirkuk Fields,” 39.

32. “Iraq Oil in 1954: Exploration Intensified,” Petroleum Times, July 12, 1955.

33. “The Daura Refinery at Baghdad,” Petroleum Times, December 23, 1955.

34. “Motion Pictures–Theater Equipment–Iraq.”

35. “New Cinema for Kirkuk Fields,” 39.

36. “New Company Films Have Baghdad Preview,” Iraq Petroleum, July 1953, 40.

37. “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, January 31, 1955.

38. “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, November 23, 1957.

39. “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, December 24, 1952. It should be noted that while the English-language newspaper Iraq Times printed regular reporting on screenings of IPC films, the author’s search for reviews published in Arabic-language newspapers in Iraq from this period did not yield results.

40. Nontheatrical screenings were sometimes mediated by the filmmakers. See, for example, an advertisement for a screening of The Third River, introduced by Peter Kelly, in Iraq Times, March 9, 1953, 7.

41. Mark Garrett Cooper et al., introduction to Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive, ed. Cooper et al. (Routledge, 2018), 16.

42. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 118.

43. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 118.

44. Quotation from “Baghdad Joint Weeka, #45, 12 November 1955; Secret,” Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Iraq, US embassy and legation Baghdad, classified general records, 1953–54, box 42, entry UD 2752, folder 350, RG 84, United States National Archives and Records Administration, cited in Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 119.

45. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 119.

46. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 119.

47. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 105–6; see also Huma Gupta, “Migrant Sarifa Settlements and State-Building in Iraq” (PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020).

48. Olsen, “Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen,” 131–32; for context, one Iraqi dinar or 1,000 fils was equivalent to 2.80 U.S. dollars at the time.

49. Olsen, “Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen,” 131–32.

50. Sentinel (pseudonym), “The Talk of the Town,” Iraq Times, July 16, 1953.

51. Gilbert E. Larsen, “Iraq’s First Motion Picture Theater Opens in May 1956,” June 7, 1956, Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of State, 1763–2002, 887.452/6-756, NACP.

52. Warner Brothers’ Helen of Troy in Cinemascope was the first film to premiere at the Khayyam. Larsen, “Iraq’s First Motion Picture Theater.” For historical context of Hollywood and global theatrical exhibition, see Ross Melnick, Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022).

53. Memdouh Zeki, “I.P.C. Film Unit Produces Film on Iraq,” Iraq Times, June 1, 1953.

54. Zeki, “I.P.C. Film Unit Produces Film on Iraq.”

55. Sentinel (pseudonym), “The Talk of the Town,” Iraq Times, October 28, 1953.

56. Peter Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction to Beladuna No. 2 in Mosul and Ain Zalah,” January 28, 1954, 3, 242682, BP Archive.

57. Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction to Beladuna No. 2 in Mosul and Ain Zalah,” 3.

58. Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction,” 2.

59. Jack G. Shaheen, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588, no. 1 (July 2003): 172. This is an abridged version excerpted from the book by the same title, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Olive Branch Press, 2015), Shaheen’s germinal study of the historical evolution of tropes vilifying and exoticizing Arabs in American cinema.

60. Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction to Beladuna No. 2 in Mosul and Ain Zalah,” 3.

61. Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction,” 3.

62. Olsen, “Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen,” 132.

63. Bishop, “Politics of Cinema,” 106.

64. Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction,” 3–4. Biladuna was an alternative transliteration of Beladuna sometimes used in company correspondence.

65. Kelly, “Report on the General Audience Reaction to Beladuna No. 2 in Mosul and Ain Zalah,” 4.

66. William Subhiyah is the author’s great-grandfather.

67. Wiliam Subhiyah, “Biladna,” Iraq Times, June 12, 1953.

68. “Welcome to a New Film User,” 47.

69. “Sponsored Spools: Getting One’s Own Films Made and Distributed,” Film User, February 1952, 73.

70. “Premiere of Third River,” Iraq Petroleum, December 1952, 40–41; “Film on Iraq Is Shown in London,” Iraq Times, May 20, 1954.

71. “Iraq Petroleum Company’s Film Show: Four Hundred Guests Attend London Premiere,” Petroleum Times, February 18, 1955, 35516, BP Archive.

72. “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, May 27, 1955; “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, March 3, 1956; “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, January 18, 1958; “A Baghdad Diary,” Iraq Times, June 12, 1958.

73. “Baghdad Diary,” May 27, 1955. More than a decade later, in 1969, the Middle East Audio-Visual Centre and Film Library was established to loan oil industry–sponsored films in its collection of four hundred titles to interested parties throughout the Middle East. When deemed necessary, the library would also revoice film commentaries in Arabic. See “Note on Meeting of Operating Companies Representatives (Special Middle East P.R. Working Group) at Beirut on 20/21 February, 1969,” April 17, 1969, 163901, BP Archive.

74. See Tom Rice, “‘Are You Proud to Be British?’: Mobile Film Shows, Local Voices and the Demise of the British Empire in Africa,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 36, no. 3 (2015): 337–38; James Burns, Flickering Shadows: Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe (Ohio University Research in International Studies, 2002), 133; and Charles Ambler, “Projecting the Modern Colonial State: Mobile Cinema in Kenya,” in Film and the End of Empire, ed. Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (Palgrave, 2011), 199–224.

EPILOGUE

1. Jeremy Bender, “These Amazing Pictures Show What Iraq Was Like Before the Country’s Decades of Chaos,” Business Insider, June 19, 2014, www.businessinsider.com/amazing -pictures-of-peaceful-iraq-2014-6.

2. See Kali Rubaii, “Birth Defects and the Toxic Legacy of War in Iraq,” Middle East Report Online, September 22, 2020; Omar Sirri, “Destructive Creations: Social-Spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad,” LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series 45 (2021); Kali Rubaii, “‘Concrete Soldiers’: T-Walls and Coercive Landscaping in Iraq,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 54, no. 2 (May 2022): 357–62; and Sinan Antoon, “A Million Lives Later, I Cannot Forgive What American Terrorism Did to My Country, Iraq,” The Guardian, March 19, 2023, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/19/violence-us-invasion -iraq-bombs-al-qaida-islamic-state; Bridget Guarasci, “Birding Under Fire: Ecological Violence and Value in Iraq,” American Ethnologist 51, no. 2 (2024): 246–57.

3. Bender, “These Amazing Pictures.”

4. Bender, “These Amazing Pictures.”

5. Grazia Ingravalle, “Indian or British Film Heritage? The Material Life of Britain’s Colonial Film Archive,” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 61, no. 2 (2022): 66. Ingravalle’s study of what she calls “films-in-motion” traces the changing semantics and status of Indian colonial films as they traverse different circulation contexts: their original production, entry into Britain’s national film archive, video transfer, televised exhibition, digitization, and appropriation into diasporic films that debunk colonial logics.

6. In contradistinction to the nostalgic modes of recirculation of Ageless Iraq, separate film projects by Sanaz Sohrabi and Nariman Massoumi reappropriate and reanimate the AIOC’s photographic and cinematic archives in critical forms of experimental documentary. In line with the work of Sandhya Suri, as discussed by Ingravalle, Sohrabi and Massoumi intervene precisely to countervail the authority of colonial narratives and disrupt fetishistic tendencies around archival imagery taken out of context. See One Image, Two Acts, dir. Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020; Scenes of Extraction, dir. Sanaz Sohrabi, 2023; and Pouring Water on Troubled Oil, dir. Nariman Massoumi, 2023.

7. Ageless Iraq Reel 2 can be viewed in several sites online, including the original post on the British Pathé website, www.britishpathe.com/asset/75266/, and its later post, “Ageless Iraq Reel 2 (1950–1959),” YouTube, April 13, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9YC89Btock.

8. The last available record of activity by the Petroleum Film Bureau was in 1973, according to a webpage on the British Film Institute’s online database that has since been removed, “Petroleum Film Bureau,” accessed June 26, 2008, http://bidweb.bfi.org.uk/web -reports/people/organisations.jsp?query=85l7l0.

9. For a critical study of the labor and material histories related to the digitization of film archives, see Ingravalle, “Indian or British Film Heritage?,” 70–79.

10. “History of British Pathé,” British Pathé, accessed June 1, 2020, www.britishpathe .com/blog/history/. The webpage has been removed from the British Pathé website; however, the page contents have been archived online: http://web.archive.org/web/20161019053941 /https://www.britishpathe.com/blog/history/.

11. See Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon Press, 2010); Antonia Juhasz, “Why the War in Iraq Was Fought for Big Oil,” CNN, March 19, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil -juhasz/index.html.

12. See Pratap Chatterjee, Iraq, Inc: A Profitable Occupation (Seven Stories Press, 2011). Cf. Achille Mbembe, “On Private Indirect Government,” in On the Postcolony (University of California Press, 2001), 66–101.

13. “Iraq: Reviving One of the World’s Super-Giant Oilfields,” BP Video Library, 2024, www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-do/bp-worldwide/bp-in-iraq.html.

14. On how the rule of law was used to justify the war and pillage of Iraq’s oil, see Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader, Plunder: When the Rule of Law Is Illegal (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008).

15. While oil films like Ageless Iraq and Persian Story that were produced as collaborations between British production companies and British oil companies and made in English for audiences in Britain and the United States have emerged from the archives to become easily accessible online, the majority of the IPC’s films either remain cloistered in the British Film Institute archive or are missing from the archive altogether, and thus are unseen outside of the physical walls of the film archive. The British Film Institute holds the only known collection of preserved episodes of Beladuna, the IPC film unit’s cine-magazine about Iraq that was specifically intended for Iraqi audiences, which to-date has not been digitized and whose existence is generally unknown. Episodes 4, 8, and 10 are the only viewing copies available from the series, and to view them one must make an advance appointment in the British Film Institute archive to watch them in their original 16mm format using a Steenbeck flatbed editor.

16. IOM Iraq: Review of Displacement and Return in Iraq, August 2010 (International Organization for Migration, 2010), 1. For a study of the rise of sectarian-based laws, segregation, and violence in Baghdad, see Mona Damluji, “‘Securing Democracy in Iraq’: Sectarian Politics and Segregation in Baghdad, 2003–2007,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 21, no. 2 (2010): 71–87.

17. Film historian Kaveh Askari orients his study of recycled global cinema around the concept of relay, “foregrounding the movement of media while also accounting for decentralized forms of agency in this movement.” Askari, Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit (University of California Press, 2022), 8.

18. Raw3aSweden, “Iraq in 1950,” YouTube, December 28, 2009, www.youtube.com /watch?v=LXqG54x1DUU&t=182s; for another example, with 23,745 views, see Abbas Kasim Mohammed, “Ageless Iraq—British Documentary about Iraq in 1950, Part 1,” YouTube, August 11, 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2VIXUuJv_Q&t=2s.

19. See Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (Knopf, 1993), 17–18.

20. British Pathé, “Ageless Iraq Reel 1 (1950–1959),” YouTube, April 13, 2014, www.youtube .com/watch?v=YY-V-Bl7GU8&t=105s. Daily increases in the total recorded views are based on the author’s regular observation of the website.

21. British Pathé, “Welcome to Baghdad: How Iraq Used to Be in the 1950s,” YouTube, August 8, 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=AajPxROvcTA.

22. The author observed that between March 2021 and December 2024, the three- minute clip of Ageless Iraq received 500,000 additional views.

23. Shereen Hafidh, “These Pictures of Iraq 60 Years Ago Will Make You Wish You Lived There,” StepFeed, October 14, 2017, https://stepfeed.com/these-pictures-of-iraq -60-years-ago-will-make-you-wish-you-lived-there-5247.

24. The @Iraqpics Twitter handle was active from 2013 to 2015, regularly tweeting vibrant color photographs that celebrated life and beauty in Iraq. The account description reads, “Discover the beautiful side of Iraq. Nature, Culture, Diversity, History, Heritage, Tourism. Past and Present.” See @Iraqpics, X, 2014, https://x.com/IraqPics.

25. Ingravalle, “Indian or British Film Heritage?,” 87.

26. These omissions recall what Laura Mulvey describes as the “double impression of imperialism” in colonial films, expressed on the one hand as the controlled image framed by the colonizer’s eye and on the other hand as the colonizer’s “blind spot.” Mulvey, “Dislocations: Some Reflections on the Colonial Compilation Film,” in Film and the End of Empire, ed. Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (British Film Institute, 2011).

27. British Pathé, “About: Before television, people came to movie theatres to watch the news. The British Pathé website hosts the very best of pioneering video journalism,” accessed January 8, 2025, www.britishpathe.com/about/.

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