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Urban Sights: Urban History and Visual Culture

IPC Film Distribution

Cinema was extremely popular in Iraq by the end of the 1940s and its theatres drew a reported annual attendance of 25 million viewers by 1950. According to the company, during the 1950s one- to two-thirds of the total Iraqi population had seen the IPC films. In order to reach general audiences, IPC documentaries and cine-magazine episodes screened prior to feature films in the thirty-nine cinema houses and thirty-two outdoor cinemas in Iraq’s major cities. Arthur Elton, senior advisor to the film unit, noted enthusiastically that the IPC cine-magazine, “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!”

Beyond this, IPC employed mobile cinema vans to project its films to audiences in smaller towns and isolated locations, such as oil fields and pump stations. According to the film unit’s cameraman, Peter Kelly, the vans would even travel to remote sites like Nasriyah and stage special screenings for audiences of IPC staff and oil workers that were as small as 50-100 people. In 1953, the first modern cinema house opened in the Kirkuk oil fields to show various programs of popular and company films.

English-language versions of IPC’s Arabic language films were also distributed outside of Iraq, among internal and general audiences in Britain. The films were shown to company staff in the cinema room in the London headquarters on Oxford Street, “so that office personnel [could] learn - from English versions of the Iraq films - what takes place at the oil-producing centres they [were] never likely to see.” Derek Hayter, a former IPC Public Relations official, recounted that in addition to internal screenings, the London office regularly loaned English translations of the films to British schools, universities, and film societies free of charge.

IPC’s most popular films among British audiences happened to be those not produced by IPC’s own film unit but by London-based productions units like Film Centre and Greenpark. Chief among them were the oil company sponsored films The Third River, Ageless Iraq, and Rivers of Time, which were catalogued and promoted in film trade periodicals like Film User and To-day’s Cinema as educational films appropriate for teaching students about Iraq, its history and culture. These films were translated to Arabic for distribution in Iraq, however only the English language versions have been archived and made available.

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“A Truly National Enterprise”
In the cinemas of Iraq the reception of the film has since been most enthusiastic. In the making of the film the Unit was greatly helped by the work of Iraqi writers, commentators and musicians. The use of national music, specially arranged for the films and played on the traditional Arab instruments, is a feature of the “Beladuna” series and is appreciated by all audiences in Iraq. The Unit's aim is to do as much of the making of these films as possible in Iraq, so that their production can become a truly national enterprise.
-- Iraq Petroleum Magazine, 1953
IPC’s explicit effort to present its film unit and cine-magazine as a “truly” Iraqi endeavor and product points to its desire to shape the national discourse on oil. Undoubtedly, any success in this regard was related to the cooperative nature of the company’s relationship to the Hashemite regime. IPC’s public relations office explicitly stated the assumption that the Iraqi government looked to the company “to do a job of general publicity that, for various reasons, they were unable to do themselves.” This included promoting Iraq’s development projects in a positive light among its citizens and promoting the country’s history and modern identity in Europe. Drawing on local talent was an important tactic that the public relations executives in London hoped would foster success in connecting with local audiences. The earliest example of this transpired in 1952 when the British director Michael Clarke was sent to Baghdad for four months to begin production on a “dramatic” script treatment prepared by Stuart Legg in London for a film about the construction of a massive pipeline between Kirkuk, Iraq and Banias, Syria. After conducting some research among engineers in Tripoli, Clarke was joined by the British cameraman Peter Kelly and assistant cameraman Kelvin Pike to commence shooting of The Third River, IPC’s first company film.
The fourth member of the on-location production unit was Kerim Mejid, an Iraqi cameraman with experience at Studio Misr in Egypt. Clarke has said that Mejid was brought on, “to help us, not only technically but with his knowledge of language and customs.” Mejid’s role as part of the production team was highlighted in the Iraq Petroleum magazine where his image was featured with the caption: Iraqi Cameraman. Arabic versions of The Third River were produced and distributed to specialized industry and general audiences in Iraq and Syria. For the translation, filmmakers worked in co-operation with Sayed Ziad Fahim, of IPC’s Baghdad Office, and Professor Rifa'ai, of the University of Damascus, to write and record Iraqi and Syrian Arabic versions of the original commentary. As director of The Third River, Clarke has emphasized that “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.” After 1952, the filmmaking strategy of the IPC public relations office was two fold. First, the Baghdad-based film unit was established to exclusively produce episodes of the Arabic-language cine-magazine for distribution in Iraq. Second, IPC sponsored the production of a dozen films by Film Centre and other production companies based in London. These films were made for distribution not only in Iraq, but also in other Arab countries as well as Britain. In all cases the company promoted the involvement of Iraqi and other Arab film technicians, writers, and musicians in the production of the oil company films.
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