Baghdad and the Narrative of Oil Modernity
IPC’s approach to making documentaries was distinguished by the company’s objective to project a vision of modern Iraq for Iraqi audiences, as opposed to the precedent set by Anglo-Iranian of making films that would entertain British stockholders and cinemagoers. During the 1920s, Royal Dutch Shell and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) experimented with documentary filmmaking to capture company operations in oil-producing regions. These silent reels were the earliest of petrofilms, using deliberate scripting, framing and editing to create positivist narratives linking oil and progress. As film technologies continued to develop, Shell, AIOC and ARAMCO went on making prestige company films that explicitly and creatively linked the story of oil to national progress in Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Petrofilms were almost always made in English, and later translated into other languages for global circulation. However, after a nationalist movement in Iran ousted AIOC in 1951, the Iraq Petroleum Company chose an approach that prioritized the production of Arabic-language films for Iraqi audiences.
The prioritization of Arabic-language production led IPC to establish a Baghdad-based film unit in 1951 that sought to train and employ Iraqi filmmakers as part of its cultural project to legitimate the image of modern Iraq crafted for the screen. In this way, the IPC films constructed a national imaginary for Iraqis residing in the north, center and south of the country, most of whom had never seen most of the nation-state of Iraq – the political entity to which they had belonged since independence in 1932.
The IPC film unit was distinct from its contemporaries because of a deep concern with its public image among Iraqis. An internal report by the IPC Public Relations office emphasizes that IPC made documentaries with the cooperation of the Iraqi government, “which welcomed the concept that films would publicise the country's historical traditions, plans for development and, generally speaking, arouse public interest, both inside and outside Iraq.” The same report claims that these 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.”
In addition to special premieres in Baghdad for nobility, government ministers, and other dignitaries, IPC films and especially episodes of the cine-magazine Beladuna were shown regularly in theatres of Iraq’s major cities, Baghdad, Kirkuk and Basrah, prior to feature films. According to film unit cameraman Peter Kelly, the company would hold special outdoor film events featuring the IPC films. The oil company also coordinated screening for its staff in remote based in and near oil fields, pump stations and refineries. Mobile cinema van units would travel to remote towns like Nasriyah and stage special screenings for audiences of IPC staff and oil workers that were as small as 50-100 people.
Senior advisor to the film unit, Arthur Elton, noted enthusiastically that the IPC documentary series Beladuna, “happened to be almost the first film ever made about Iraq, almost the first time anyone had recorded what was happening in Iraq. In no time at all the film was showing in public cinemas to enthusiastic audiences. In fact, enthusiasm was so great that the film was sometimes played through twice, and tickets changed hands at a premium!” According to the company, during the 1950s one- to two-thirds of the total Iraqi population had seen the IPC films.
The company speculated that the government looked to the IPC “to do a job of general publicity that, for various reasons, they were unable to do themselves.” According to founder John Shearman, the IPC film unit’s stated goals were, first, “to train Iraqi film technicians in [the British] tradition of technical and documentary filmmaking,” and second, “to make films which would 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.”
The built environment in the Iraqi capital was central to the production of a narrative of oil modernity. That is, images of urban space and urban life were used to construct a visual argument about oil as a national resource. In the IPC films, the modern city and its architecture is pictured not only as images of static facades, but as dynamic sites in which Iraqis actively participate in the building of the nation through physical labor and social performance. Images of the city are also juxtaposed with pastoral images of rural life in order to define urban modernity against rural tradition. The documentaries catalogue and depict traditions in order to establish a framework for the dramatic change brought about by modernization fueled by petroleum industry revenue.
This Scalar project analyses the representation of urban space as the basis for a national narrative in three IPC documentaries, which were made and distributed prior to the 1958 July Revolution that diminished the hegemonic British position in Iraq since the First World War. This is a small yet significant collection of oil films and includes The Third River (1951), Ageless Iraq (1954), and A More Beautiful Capital (1955). These are the first moving pictures to be shot on location in Iraq and crafted into documentary narratives about the modern nation-state for general audiences in Iraq and Britain. Taken together, this corpus of documentaries can help us to better understand how the neo-colonial imaginary of Baghdad worked to recast the modern city as a promise of petroleum. Indeed, IPC sponsored, produced, and circulated these slick documentaries precisely because they hoped to communicate a version of the story of modern Iraq that would be viewed as a national narrative.
The IPC film unit was distinct from its contemporaries because of a deep concern with its public image among Iraqis. An internal report by the IPC Public Relations office emphasizes that IPC made documentaries with the cooperation of the Iraqi government, “which welcomed the concept that films would publicise the country's historical traditions, plans for development and, generally speaking, arouse public interest, both inside and outside Iraq.” The same report claims that these 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.”
In addition to special premieres in Baghdad for nobility, government ministers, and other dignitaries, IPC films and especially episodes of the cine-magazine Beladuna were shown regularly in theatres of Iraq’s major cities, Baghdad, Kirkuk and Basrah, prior to feature films. According to film unit cameraman Peter Kelly, the company would hold special outdoor film events featuring the IPC films. The oil company also coordinated screening for its staff in remote based in and near oil fields, pump stations and refineries. Mobile cinema van units would travel to remote towns like Nasriyah and stage special screenings for audiences of IPC staff and oil workers that were as small as 50-100 people.
Senior advisor to the film unit, Arthur Elton, noted enthusiastically that the IPC documentary series Beladuna, “happened to be almost the first film ever made about Iraq, almost the first time anyone had recorded what was happening in Iraq. In no time at all the film was showing in public cinemas to enthusiastic audiences. In fact, enthusiasm was so great that the film was sometimes played through twice, and tickets changed hands at a premium!” According to the company, during the 1950s one- to two-thirds of the total Iraqi population had seen the IPC films.
The company speculated that the government looked to the IPC “to do a job of general publicity that, for various reasons, they were unable to do themselves.” According to founder John Shearman, the IPC film unit’s stated goals were, first, “to train Iraqi film technicians in [the British] tradition of technical and documentary filmmaking,” and second, “to make films which would 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.”
The built environment in the Iraqi capital was central to the production of a narrative of oil modernity. That is, images of urban space and urban life were used to construct a visual argument about oil as a national resource. In the IPC films, the modern city and its architecture is pictured not only as images of static facades, but as dynamic sites in which Iraqis actively participate in the building of the nation through physical labor and social performance. Images of the city are also juxtaposed with pastoral images of rural life in order to define urban modernity against rural tradition. The documentaries catalogue and depict traditions in order to establish a framework for the dramatic change brought about by modernization fueled by petroleum industry revenue.
This Scalar project analyses the representation of urban space as the basis for a national narrative in three IPC documentaries, which were made and distributed prior to the 1958 July Revolution that diminished the hegemonic British position in Iraq since the First World War. This is a small yet significant collection of oil films and includes The Third River (1951), Ageless Iraq (1954), and A More Beautiful Capital (1955). These are the first moving pictures to be shot on location in Iraq and crafted into documentary narratives about the modern nation-state for general audiences in Iraq and Britain. Taken together, this corpus of documentaries can help us to better understand how the neo-colonial imaginary of Baghdad worked to recast the modern city as a promise of petroleum. Indeed, IPC sponsored, produced, and circulated these slick documentaries precisely because they hoped to communicate a version of the story of modern Iraq that would be viewed as a national narrative.