Conclusion
The almost ‘supernatural’ properties attributed to the black gold have…been able to generate competing myths and realities of the modern world and urban living, often contributing to popularise different discourses about states, nations and progress.
-- Nelida Fuccaro
The Iraq Petroleum Company films actively produced a discursive and visual argument about petroleum’s promise to modernize Iraq through images of its capital Baghdad. Documentary film was a powerful medium through which the oil company and the state promoted its narrative to legitimate its operations in Iraq. Images of new boulevards, schools, public buildings, automobile traffic and double decker buses signified the modernization of the built environment. This was held up on screen as evidence of petroleum’s promise. These films are efforts to imagine the modern nation of Iraq and naturalize oil wealth using images of the built environment to construct a modern geography of national territory, national history, and national identity.
The IPC films deliberately projected a coherent imaginary of the modern nation that centered on the oil city to audiences across Iraq. Director Michael Clarke noted from his perspective that when The Third River first played in Iraqi cinemas, the oil film caused a powerful reaction among audiences. “It was said that people were not aware of their country - how [little] the Kurds really felt any sense of union with Iraqis in the deep south and the marsh Arabs.” The Third River was the oil company’s first attempt to produce a national imaginary for Iraqis residing in all parts of the country. The film established the dominant narrative that linked oil extraction to the promise of urban modernity, which ultimately signified national development.
On the other hand, A More Beautiful Capital, produced as part of the Beladuna series cut the oil industry out of the story altogether and focused instead on making short films about the transformations affecting the people of Iraq and region. In A More Beautiful Capital, the destruction of Baghdad’s old neighborhoods is rationalized as evidence of modernity, making way for new construction of “beautiful” public buildings and modernist housing estates.
The collective experience of watching cinema is powerful and fosters the possibility of a national imaginary as well as a distinct experience of urban modernity. The Iraq Petroleum Company projected its films to citizens across Iraq, from oil workers in the fields and residents of Baghdad in the city center. In colloquial Arabic, the narration put words to the moving pictures of modern Iraq that linked these distant communities across the country. IPC and the Iraqi government relied on these oil films to produce a collective national imaginary of national territory, national history, and national identity for Iraqis. The underlying premise in these films is that oil is the lifeblood of modern Iraq.