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• 1 2014-06-30T14:04:33-07:00 Facing Iraq "As It Is" 9 split 2014-07-07T18:10:03-07:00 Director Michael Clarke wrote of IPC’s first film project that, “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.” The Third River crafted a positive image of the company for Iraqis with a coherent image of dignified and cooperative Iraqi oil workers, invested in the construction of the pipeline as a nation-building project. At the same time the film tied the project of oil extraction to the promise of modernity and social progress in Iraq.
  The title The Third River emphasizes the flow of oil through its new pipeline as akin to the natural rivers that bring life to the land. Thus, the pipeline is represented as a natural conduit of national progress and modernity. In this sense, the film works to erase the visibility of the foreign company through the construction of an imaginary of oil extraction as a natural process, aided by modern industry. In this regard, the film excludes documentation of the top-down planning by the IPC that was necessary to carry out the pipeline project. Instead, the film focuses on presenting images of labor as if the construction were unfolding from the bottom up. The film presents long sequences of men at work, welding and lifting and patiently waiting as the tedium of construction goes on. In the film and related promotional materials, the image of dignified and cooperative Iraqi oil workers, invested in the construction of the pipeline as a nation-building project, are featured as the driving workforce behind the project of oil extraction. Images of the oil company’s non-Iraqi representatives and experts are virtually absent, except when white supervisors in European dress are shown cooperating with men on the ground. Ultimately, The Third River defines the project of oil extraction as a logical extension of the country’s natural wealth, a foundation for the promise of national development (signified by modernization in the capital), and a stage for workforce productivity and cooperation. The Third River presented Iraqi, Syrian and British audiences in the 1950s an unparalleled, close-up perspective on the infrastructure of oil extraction, and the construction of the new pipeline that would deliver unprecedented quantities of Iraqi oil to the European market – yielding unprecedented quantities of petro-dollars. Clarke has said that, “To a great extent the 30 in. line served as a vehicle to convey impressions of the life and background of modern Iraq as the ‘cradle of civilization’ – as all important focal point of industrial development and as a land of sound economic promise.” To link the cradle of civilization with the civilizing power of oil, the film pairs landscapes of industrial infrastructure with landscapes of archaeological significance that are intended to recall imaginaries of Babylon and Ur.