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• 1 2014-06-29T19:56:14-07:00 The Iraq Petroleum Company Medienverbund 27 text 20861 2014-07-06T20:57:52-07:00 In 1951 the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) established its public relations office in conjunction with the new 50-50 agreement. The focus of the office was to produce and circulate periodicals and films that explained the company’s operations in Iraq to internal company employees as well as the general 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. Circulation of the monthly magazines reached 46,000 per issue for Ahl al Naft (in Arabic) and 20,000 per issue for its English language counterpart Iraq Petroleum. In its inaugural issue the editor in chief of Iraq Petroleum explained that, 

  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.

  The publication headquarters for Ahl al Naft was based in Beirut, with contributions from Arab writers from across the region. Meanwhile, the English language version 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 content of both publications. Photo essays and articles about modern architecture, art and everyday life in Baghdad were frequent from the earliest issues in 1951.

  A strong relationship between the IPC public relations office and the Iraqi government was made explicit through the regular contributions of state ministers writing about topics from education policy to housing programs. Close collaboration between the government and the company was further reflected in the reproduction of exact photographs and text from the IPC periodicals in publicity documents published by Iraq’s Directorate-General of Guidance and Broadcasting, such as the three volume tome Land of Two Rivers: Building a New Iraq. An internal report by the IPC Public Relations office emphasizes that IPC also made films 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.”  IPC’s approach to making films 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 Oil Company. Beginning in 1921 just ten years after the completion of the first pipeline to Abadan, the Anglo-Iranian used photography and film technologies chiefly to document company operations in oil-producing regions for company executives and stockholders in Britain. These silent reels were the earliest films to narrativize the discovery and development of the British oil industry in the Middle East. In subsequent decades, Anglo-Iranian, Shell, and ARAMCO sponsored prestige films that were intended to entertain and educate general audiences in order to bolster those companies’ reputations among potential consumers.  Traditionally, British and American oil company films were produced in English and translated into other languages for distribution in other markets. However, after the nationalist movement in Iran ousted Anglo-Iranian in 1951, the Iraq Petroleum Company newly established public relations office reconsidered the question of how film use could best serve the company. The result was a novel approach that prioritized the production of Arabic-language films and an emphasis on direct distribution to Iraqi audiences, in addition to the standard industry practice of sponsoring films made by British production companies in English that were later translated for regional distribution. Midway through production of its first company film The Third River, IPC’s film officer John Shearman began to recruit British filmmakers for a new Baghdad-based film unit. As Peter Kelly, the unit's director, has explained, the IPC film unit was distinct from its contemporaries because of its explicit concern with making films for “the cinema-going Iraqi people” as opposed to stockholders or consumers in Britain. Between 1953 and 1958 the unit shot, scripted and edited thirteen episodes of the IPC cine-magazine Beladuna in 35mm, each comprised of two or three short films about Iraq and its regional context. The films tended to focus on various aspects related to the modernization of Baghdad from its new bus system to its modern architecture and planning. 
  The IPC public relations office assumed that the company 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.” Indeed the IPC films were the first to project moving images of the modernization of Baghdad to mass audiences in Iraq. In the Beladuna episode titled A More Beautiful Capital, the physical transformations of the city are used as evidence of Baghdad's progress and Iraq's modernization. For example, the final sequence features a montage of modern homes and cars, over which the voiceover concludes, “More homes, more beautiful houses, and more grand constructions make Baghdad a capital city fit for a modern country.”  
  Together, the oil company films and cine-magazine constructed a new national imaginary for Iraqis residing in the north, center and south of the country, many of who had never travelled to other parts of Iraq. The popularity of cinema and its accessibility to all sectors of the population made the oil films a particularly direct means through which the company worked to communicate with Iraqis and shape the national discourse on oil.
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• 1 2014-06-30T18:56:33-07:00 Beladuna 9 plain 2014-11-15T14:49:28-08:00
  Beladuna was notably the most genuine effort among contemporaries in oil company media making to engage with the complexities of modernization in an oil producing country. Several of the short films included the company cine-magazine Beladuna provide a relatively nuanced study of the challenges of nation building, from the destruction of old Baghdad neighborhoods to make way for modern construction projects. Although Beladuna never came close to providing an explicit critique of the power wielded by the oil industry or government, a distinction in IPC’s approach to filmmaking is obvious in the specific nature of the film subjects and input of the Iraqi production crew members. In fact, the IPC cine-magazine consistently neglected to present any reference to the oil company in its stories about modern Iraq. 
  Among the dozens of episodes made as part of the Beladuna series, a reoccurring theme that built on the central message in The Third River was the modernization of Baghdad. However, in these films the modernization of the city was only implicitly linked to the country’s increasing oil wealth. Oil and IPC are not mentioned. A More Beautiful Capital (Arabic: Assimatun Ajmel) is a short documentary made in 1955 as part of the tenth episode of the IPC’s Arabic language cine-magazine. The film depicts the modernization of Baghdad's built environment in the mid-1950s, namely the destruction of older neighborhoods to make way for "modern construction". The documentary is constructed as a sequence of montages accompanied by an original soundtrack and scripted voiceover, narrating various scenes of the making of modern Baghdad. Visible evidence of urban change is used to illustrate and substantiate scripted commentary. The musical composition shifts in tone and level to enhance the mood of each sequence. The narration works to persuade audiences that destruction of older neighborhoods is necessary to facilitate construction of modern buildings, which are fundamental to making Baghdad into “a capital fit for a modern country.”

  IPC promoted its Beladuna series as an effort “to project modern Iraq” to ordinary Iraqis. The decision to make the national population of an oil-producing country the primary audience for corporate films was until then unprecedented in the Middle East. IPC screened the films in theatres of every major Iraqi city prior to feature films, as well as in mobile units that would travel to audiences of oil workers in remote oil fields, pump stations and refineries. During the summer special screening would be held outdoors. Documentation of the distribution and reception of these films from the Iraqi perspective has not been recorded or is no longer available. What is clear from the films as well as interviews with filmmakers related to the production of Beladuna is that the company used the company cine-magazine as an attempt to establish a coherent national imaginary of progress in Iraq that was implicitly tied to the story of oil.