Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

The Oil City in Focus

The Cinematic Spaces of Abadan in the Anglo-­Iranian
Oil Company’s Persian Story

Mona Damluji

The object of the film is quite definitely not to advertise the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company or to
display it in anything but its correct place and proportion in the modern Persian scene. The object
of the film is to make, I think for the first time, a first-­class film of Persia available for public and
private showing, which there is every reason to expect will attract wide public interest and attention.
— ​Letter from AHT Chisholm (Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company, London Headquarters) to AH Hamzavi
(Imperial Iranian Embassy, Tehran), 8 November 1950

A
s the most widely circulated cinematic portrait of Abadan as it was under full Anglo-­I ranian
Oil Company (AIOC) administration, the documentary film Persian Story offers an exceptional
opportunity to examine the ways in which the oil company attempted to shape perceptions of
modernity in the oil city of Abadan, on the screen and on the ground. Persian Story serves broadly as an
important case study of the politicization of oil company films and the space of oil cities. As the analysis
presented in this article suggests, oil company films can be read both as a text and as a set of practices
shaped by the need to legitimize the work of an extractive foreign company, and thus privilege particular
readings of oil cities and modernity. In fact, this film in particular was planned before the nationalization
of the oil industry in Iran, shot before and during the uprisings, and edited and circulated afterward.
Thus, this essay considers how the AIOC’s Persian Story informs a critical understanding of moderniza-
tion in Abadan in the context of this politically volatile period in Iran’s modern history. Specifically, it
examines how cinematic devices used in the final cut of the film worked to selectively render spaces and
processes of the modern city visible or invisible to suit the political needs of the AIOC.
In 1951, the AIOC conceived of Persian Story as “the first genuine effort to portray Iran sympatheti-
cally to the outside world.”1 AIOC executives declared the film to be “one of the most important publicity
projects ever undertaken by the company,”2 and one that would excite audiences at home with a glimpse
of life in Abadan, which developed on a small island at the site of AIOC’s most productive and the world’s
largest oil refinery (fig. 1). A 1953 advertisement for Persian Story (fig. 2) describes the film as one that
“gives a vivid impression of the Company’s achievements in that country and of the life led by its Brit-

1. Ronald Tritton, “Memo to Mr. Keating,” 6 February 1951, 183091, BP 2. “Draft Memorandum to General Management and Chief Representa-
Archive. tive in Iran,” 1950, 183091, BP Archive.

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Vol. 33, No. 1, 2013 • doi 10.1215/1089201x-2072730 • © 2013 by Duke University Press

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76 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

Figure 2. BP Films Advertisement of Persian Story.   Film User,

January 1953, 260. The BP Archive has given permission to
reproduce this advertisement but does not hold a copy
Figure 1. “Abadan — ​The Fruit of British Industry that Persia
Covets.” Illustrated London News, 8 September 1951. © BP plc
region of Khuzistan. After striking a productive
3
ish and Persian employees.” However, the behind-­ source of oil for the first time in 1908, D’Arcy and
the-­scenes details of the oil company’s production his partners formed the Anglo-­Persian Oil Com-
of Persian Story reveal a far more complicated and pany (later renamed Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company).
intriguing story. Almost as soon as filmmakers had Within a few years they had drilled scores of new
started shooting on location in Iran in 1951, in- wells, laid more than a hundred miles of pipeline,
creasing discontent among oil workers regarding and built the world’s largest refinery on the des-
the conditions imposed by AIOC had reached its ert island of Abadan. Oil started f lowing from
peak. By April, the movement led by Prime Min- Khuzistan, which the company referred to as the
ister Mohammad Mossadegh to nationalize Iran’s Fields, to Abadan by 1911. Before long the area sur-
oil industry culminated as strikes at the Abadan rounding the refinery developed into an oil city of
refinery and related protests swept across major over one hundred thousand residents. Iranian oil
cities. By the end of the summer, AIOC evacuated workers made up the majority of Abadan’s popu-
all British employees from the oil city and the com- lation. They migrated from surrounding areas to
pany’s operations were turned over to the newly the oil city, settling in slums and dormitories rel-
created National Iranian Oil Company. egated to parts of the city that AIOC neglected to
The British never formally colonized Iran; maintain or even provide with decent sanitary ser-
however, in 1901 the shah signed over vast territo- vices. From the outset, AIOC planned Abadan as
rial concessions to the British oil baron William a segregated city that kept apart the living spaces
Knox D’Arcy. This granted him exclusive rights and everyday activities of Iranians from the quar-
to prospect for and extract oil from the southern ters and facilities of the oil company’s British ad-

3. “Oil on the Screen,” Film User, January 1953, 260.

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Mona Damluji • The Oil City in Focus 77

ministrators and technicians. AIOC provided the Rethinking Cinema and the City at the Peripheries
British staff amenities and some luxuries that Ira- Until now, the collection of AIOC films held by
nians were forbidden from using, including cin- the British Petroleum Video Library in London
emas, buses, and water fountains marked “Not for has been largely overlooked by scholars, despite
Iranians.”4
By and large, the oil company
was the powerful symbol of British
imperialism in Iran and its control
over the countr y’s oil resources
guided the production of space in
the oil city. Thus, in the course of
the Iranian struggle against imperi-
alism, Abadan was a critical stage for
voicing popular politics and a site
for the social, economic, and politi-
cal struggles of Iran’s working class
to play out over the next forty years
after the initial concession. Building
on earlier protests against AIOC’s
treatment of non-­European workers
and families that began as early as
Figure 3. Oil laborers demonstrate and raise the Iranian flag over the Abadan
1914, Iranian oil workers in Abadan
refinery building in June 1951 as a gesture of solidarity with the movement led by
organized a landmark strike in 1929 Prime Minister Mossadegh to nationalize the oil industry in Iran. J. H. Bamberg, The
to demand fair wages, hours, and History of the British Petroleum Company, vol. 2, The Anglo-­Iranian Years, 1928  –  ­1954
working conditions. Ultimately, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 426
the combined efforts of Shah Reza
Pahlavi’s regime and of the British
oil company suppressed the upris-
ing and crushed any further union
activity.5 Over the subsequent years,
AIOC continued to provide Iranian
laborers with insecure working con-
ditions and inadequate housing and
services for the growing number
of local employees. In June 1951,
Iranian laborers took control of
the Abadan refinery in support of
Prime Minister Mossadegh’s radical
move to nationalize the oil industry
(fig. 3). The uprising succeeded in
halting AIOC’s operations, and as a
result the movement forced the com-
pany to evacuate all British employ- Figure 4. AIOC evacuates its British employees from Abadan in October 1951.
ees from the oil city (fig. 4).6 Bamberg. The History of the British Petroleum Company, 2:457

4. See Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An 5. See Stephanie Cronin, “Popular Politics, the 6. See Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men, 92– ​101. See also
American Coup and the Roots of Middle East New State, and the Birth of the Iranian Work- J. H. Bamberg, A History of the British Petroleum
Terror (Hoboken, NJ: J. Wiley and Sons, 2003), ing Class: The 1929 Abadan Oil Refinery Strike,” Company, vol. 2, The Anglo-­Iranian Years, 1928– ​
47– ​50. Middle Eastern Studies 46 (2010): 669, 705– ​6. 1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982), 422– ​57.

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78 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

the fact that these were among the earliest docu- of films on the historical background, culture, na-
mentary films made in and about the Middle East tional economy, and transport, public health, and
to be circulated to mass audiences worldwide. By education systems of Venezuela. Shell developed
the 1950s, corporate sponsorship of documentary this film program specifically for a Venezuelan
films had become common practice for oil compa- audience, as the company wanted to demonstrate
nies, as they were convinced that the technology the importance of oil for the national economy
of cinema was the ideal vehicle for public rela- to the general population in Venezuela. Shell fin-
tions campaigns intended to bolster positive pub- ished two films from the series, Horizontes Naciona-
lic perceptions of the companies’ extractive post- les (New Horizons, 1949) and Las Bases del Progreso
war activities in the Middle East and elsewhere.7 (Harvest for Tomorrow, 1950), and distributed them
Shell emerged as the first multinational oil com- widely to Venezuelan audiences. Canjels suggests
pany to venture into the full-­scale production of that the foreign oil company intended the films to
films for popular consumption beginning in 1924. send a didactic message to the population “that
The Shell Film Unit hired John Grierson, known profits derived from oil could create opportunities
as the grandfather of the British Documentary to industrialise the economy, stimulate agricul-
Movement, and many of Europe’s most notable tural development, and raise technical and educa-
documentary filmmakers to produce hundreds of tional standards.”11
Shell films. In Grierson’s scheme for Shell, he pro- Miguel Tinker Salas’s study of oil, culture,
posed six types of film uses that would serve the and politics in Venezuela suggests that during the
interests of the company, including those “drama- 1940s and 1950s foreign oil companies were par-
tizing dominant themes in the oil industry; sales-­ ticularly concerned with establishing the coun-
promotion films; popular science films; technical try’s role as a model of strong, positive relations
films for specialized audiences; staff department between the oil companies and indigenous societ-
information films; and a Shell newsreel.” 8 During ies. They hoped that this model could serve as a
the 1950s more than 130 Shell films were made and positive precedent for continued US and European
distributed around the world, reaching over 8.5 expansion into the oil-­r ich territories of the Mid-
million people.9 dle East.12 Shell’s documentaries on Venezuela are
The subject matter taken up by Shell films early examples of how foreign oil companies ad-
varied greatly but frequently dealt with topics opted filmmaking technologies in order to control
linked to technology, research, and various as- a cultural project that linked notions of modernity
pects of modern life including car racing, firefight- and national development to the prospering oil
ing, disease control, and robotics engineering, to industry. As the following section will discuss in
name a few. In contrast to typical industrial films detail, when AIOC followed Shell’s lead and estab-
sponsored by other companies, Shell films never lished its own public relations department in the
used direct advertising and typically referenced 1940s, the company used documentary filmmak-
the company only in the opening or closing cred- ing to control the depiction of the oil industry’s
its. Rudmer Canjels explains, “With a few excep- operations for audiences worldwide. From the out-
tions (made for special purposes), prestige was to set, the cinematic representation of the oil city of
be obtained through association instead of clear Abadan was central to AIOC’s broader message to
propaganda.” 10 Although Shell produced a num- the general public at home that oil extraction was
ber of films, filmmakers rarely turned the camera fundamental to the progress of modernity in Iran.
on the subject of the oil-­producing countries. How- In this respect, and as elsewhere in the Middle
ever, in 1950 Shell planned an exceptional series East, the oil city signified the necessary relation-

7. See Patrick Russell and James Piers Taylor, den, Stephen Howarth, and K. E. Sluyterman 12. See Manuel Tinker Salas, The Enduring Leg-
Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-­ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 18. acy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela (Dur-
War Britain (London: BFI, 2010), 87– ​95. ham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 218–   ​19.
9. See ibid., 27.
8. Rudmer Canjels, “From Oil to Celluloid: A His-
10. Ibid., 19.
tory of Shell Films,” in A History of Royal Dutch
Shell, vol. 4, ed. Joost Jonker, Jan Luiten van Zan- 11. Ibid., 25.

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Mona Damluji • The Oil City in Focus 79

ship between oil and modernity because its growth This article also draws from Mark Shiel’s crit-
and transformation — ​namely, the modernization ical understanding of the ways in which the cin-
of infrastructure, town planning, and architec- ema, urban space, and society inform and shape
ture — ​was determined by the revenues generated one another. In Cinema and the City, he maintains
by foreign companies and by the physical and so- that new scholarship should work to “[undermine]
cial spaces engineered by them through the con- the reifying tendency to speak of cinema simply in
trol of the oil industry. terms of the text and its reflection of urban and so-
Scholars interested in the relationship be- cial change ‘on the ground.’” Instead — ​as Shiel ex-
tween films and the cities they represent have yet plains — ​we must foster “an understanding of cin-
to examine the role of early documentary and oil ema as a set of practices and activities, as well as a
films in particular as some of the earliest cinematic set of texts,” and “as something which never ceases
depictions of urban life in the Middle East. In Cin- to intervene in society, and which participates in
ematic Urbanism, Nezar AlSayyad emphasizes that the maintenance, mutation, and subversion of sys-
lived experiences of the modern city cannot be tems of power.” 14 Building on Shiel’s and AlSayy-
understood independently of cinematic represen- ad’s critical reassessments of how urban scholars
tations of urban modernity. He points to the need might engage film and how film specialists can
for scholars to go beyond the examination of how study cities to produce better readings of how one
films work to capture or depict societies “as they transforms the other, this article aims to establish
really are” and to account for the ways in which an interdisciplinary space that brings film studies,
films influence how we construct and perceive the Middle Eastern studies, and urban studies into
world and, as a result, how we operate within it.13 conversation. Through a contextualized analysis of
While AlSayyad focuses on US and European cen- how the city of Abadan is construed in the film Per-
ters of modernity, this article shifts attention to cit- sian Story, it also intends to develop a better under-
ies whose development is linked to oil as the fuel of standing, in the context of the Middle Eastern oil
modern life in order to see how cinema operates to city, of what Shiel has defined with reference to cit-
define modern urban life within and/or from the ies in Europe and the United States as the “social
periphery. It is from this perspective that AIOC’s conditions of the production, distribution, exhibi-
Persian Story virtually constructs Abadan in cine- tion, and reception of cinema” and “the mediated
matic space as the location in which modernity is production of urban space and urban identity.” 15
made possible for the Iranian people. In the film, Ultimately, this article is concerned with how oil
the making of the Westernized city, and thus the company films have worked to shape collective
potential for Iranian modernity, is equated with imaginations of oil cities through their production
the revenue generated by the petroleum industry. and circulation among publics in Europe and the
In other words, the film constructs the notion of Middle East.
modernity in Abadan in terms of the visual aes-
thetics of Westernization, and thus renders invis- Intersecting Histories of Filmmaking
ible the material and social conditions of Iran’s and Oil Extraction
working class that resulted from the development Postcolonial studies of the Middle East have repeat-
of the oil industry. This article contextualizes the edly established how Western political, military,
film’s narrative of modernity in order to articulate and economic interventions in the region for pur-
the critical disjunctions between virtual and real, poses of oil extraction, together with simultaneous
allowing for a better understanding of spaces ren- efforts to control the production and circulation of
dered visible and invisible in the representation of knowledge about the region, have critically shaped
the modern city in oil films. the imagined geographies of modern states in the

13. Nezar AlSayyad, Cinematic Urbanism: A His- 14. Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, Cinema
tory of the Modern from Reel to Real (New York: and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a
Routledge, 2006), 1– ​3. Global Context (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 4.

15. Ibid, 3– ​4 .

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80 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

Middle East.16 However, the political and cultural that conquered and controlled inhospitable and
significance of the intersecting histories of British barren Persian desert landscapes. In a letter to the
oil exploitation and cinematic production in the editor of the Persian newspaper Ettela’at published
Middle East in the course of the previous century in 1928, a reader identified as H. Khuzestani vents
are hardly acknowledged. By examining this con- his frustrations with the film’s misrepresentations
nection, this article brings to light some of the key of the Iranian oil industry:
ways in which oil and the cinema worked in tan-
In Tehran they show you the beautiful films of the
dem to construct Western conceptions of urban oil operations in the south. Of course, these tell
modernity in the Middle East, specifically in Iran. of the enormity of the company’s buildings and
Earlier on in AIOC’s film production history, facilities and of the importance of its oil lines,
that is before the 1950s, the company projected and, naturally, you and your journalist colleagues
flickering black and white images on screens in enjoy them, and perhaps think that this company
London to bring to life moving picture records is serving and benefiting Iran. But have these
of the infrastructure of pumps and pipelines that films ever shown the wretched lives of those lowly
Iranian workers who for three qerans a day toil in
brought forth gushing towers of sticky black gold
highly dangerous conditions and in really heart-­
from the barren desert. The completion of AIOC’s
wrenching manner? . . . Have these films ever
first pipeline in 1911 was soon followed by the pro-
shown you the dictatorial manner in which the
duction of Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company’s Operations [British] managers of the southern oil company
in Iran (1921), the first AIOC documentary. This govern your fellow citizens and push and shove
silent black and white 35mm film was a survey of them around and stifle those who voice the slight-
“company activities,” ran just over one hour, cost est complaint?19
just over £2000, and circulated among “company
As Khuzestani points out, the film presents the
officials.” 17 This early precedent served as the
context of lived space and society in Iran as little
model for AIOC’s film The Persian Oil Industry: The
more than an exotic Oriental backdrop to the ex-
Story of the Great National Enterprise (1925), a silent
pansion of the British Empire. Furthermore, the
35mm that originally ran ninety-­eight minutes and
film’s focus on the spectacle of industrial machin-
was later cut to forty-­five minutes and circulated
ery renders invisible the experience of Iranian
among technical institutions and schools. Not
workers. Subsequent AIOC films failed to depict or
long after, it was cut into a fifteen-­minute version
even address the working and living conditions of
titled In the Land of the Shah (1926) that was shown
Iranian laborers, and images of the oil city were
in public cinemas in England and seen by upward
cast strictly in terms of how the Abadan’s output of
of 1 million people across Europe.18 These silent
oil drove national development.
moving pictures depicted the most visible aspects
In 1936, AIOC convinced the Iranian govern-
of company operations: crude oil channeled from
ment to allow it to begin work on the short sound
AIOC rigs in the oil-­producing region referred to
film Dawn of Iran (1937– ​ 38). The film portrayed the
as the Fields, through vast networks of pipeline tra-
emergence of the modern state of Iran and glori-
versing the Persian desert to the refinery, where it
fied the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi. This marked
would be treated and shipped to London ready for
a shift in the company’s approach to filmmaking.
the Royal Navy and the British consumer.
For the first time AIOC used it to appease the Ira-
These earliest AIOC films focused on the
nian government, which insisted on strict supervi-
visual spectacles of oil exploitation: the rig, the
sion of film production to ensure that the movie
pipeline, and the refinery. Modernity was con-
would not include any footage of camels and car-
structed in terms of industrial technologies of oil
pet makers as they would “make Iran look primi-

16. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: 17. Elena Adams, “BP Archive History” (unpub- 18. See Naficy, A Social History, 183.
Pantheon, 1978); and Derek Gregory, The Colo- lished paper circulated within BP Video Library,
19. Ibid., 183– ​84.
nial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq 2008): 1; and Hamid Naficy, A Social History of
(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004). Iranian Cinema, vol. 1, The Artisanal Era, 1897    – ​  1941
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 183.

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Mona Damluji • The Oil City in Focus 81

tive.”20 Yet in spite of this, Dawn of Iran was in many pany films were planned and executed with ex-
ways an exhibition of the British oil company’s first plicit public relations objectives in mind: to pro-
recognition of Iran as more than a site of oil pro- mote AIOC’s reputation to general audiences in
duction. The documentary focused on depictions England and Europe, to bolster marketing of oil
of old and new in order to convey the story of Iran’s and lubricants, to build recognizable and well-­
modernization under the shah, capturing images reputed brands and increase customer loyalty, and
from the archeological ruins of Persepolis, the also to facilitate internal company relations and
mosques of Isfahan, the oil refineries, and engi- educational programs.22 During this period, the
neering spectacles like the Trans-­Iranian Railway. company made a notable number of what film ex-
A contemporary review of Dawn of Iran published perts termed “prestige films” intended to impress
in the cinema-­focused British periodical World Film company stockholders and general cinema audi-
News gives a clear sense of how the film narrative ences with spectacular moving pictures of the com-
is constructed: pany’s activities and achievements in oil-­producing
countries. In London, the Petroleum Film Bureau
The discovery of oil and the appearance on the
scene of Reza Khan made Iran possible. The for- (PFB) was established to provide ongoing nonthe-
mer brought wealth to the country and Reza Khan atrical distribution of oil films to schools, colleges,
knew how to control that wealth for his people’s film societies, and special interest clubs. Circula-
good. . . . Roads are built in a couple of shots — ​ tion of these documentaries beyond their theat-
deserts reclaimed in a sequence; crops improved rical release increased steadily during the 1950s,
with a cut; and agriculture mechanized in a dis- and by 1956 the PFB reported that distribution of
solve. Progress appears almost too easy. The film oil films had climbed to seventy-­eight thousand
Iran is built in a day. Towering behind this renais-
borrowed in that year alone.23 Furthermore, many
sance are the shining and fantastic shapes of oil
of these films were presented in international
wells; pumping their liquid power through mile
film festivals and in some cases were awarded top
after mile of pipeline to the refineries of Abadan.
Bringing back from the West money for the Trea- prizes.
sury, money to educate a nation and build a new According to Ronald Tritton, director of
country.21 AIOC’s public relations during the 1950s, film-
making became a key strategy of public relations
In Dawn of Iran AIOC exhibited progress in terms
efforts by the company because “films can evoke
of top-­down modernization fueled literally and
feelings in an audience: they can make people
figuratively by the oil industry. The film circulated
feel well disposed towards a company or an indus-
among company staff and in European cinemas,
try and realize that it is a decent, honest, well-­r un
exposing public audiences for the first time to nar-
and efficient organization.” 24 That the oil com-
rated moving pictures of a modernizing Iran, de-
pany was concerned with convincing the general
void of more obvious Orientalist tropes of flying
public of its “decent” and “honest” character is a
carpets and camels.
mark of shifting public perceptions of empire in
Following a temporary filmmaking hiatus in
Great Britain in the context of postwar geopoli-
Iran during World War II, the AIOC established a
tics. As the United States promoted the principle
special department to oversee the production and
of self-­determination among formerly colonized
distribution of documentary films in 1948. AIOC
territories following World War I, the undisguised
consulted with pioneers of the British Documen-
exploitation of resources in the Middle East be-
tary Movement and hired top film directors and
came increasingly unacceptable and thus had to
production units to realize their vision. Oil com-
be reframed in terms of British corporate enter-

20. John Taylor, “The Production of Dawn of 21. “Oil beneath the Bough,” World Film News, 23. See ibid., 465.
Iran” (unpublished report from 1982); cited in October 1938, 35516, BP Archive.
24. Ibid.
ibid., 185. Naficy notes that in 1938 the govern-
22. See Ronald Tritton, “How We Use Films: At
ment implemented explicit regulations on any
Anglo-­Iranian,” Film User, September 1953, 464.
images of Iran that foreigners recorded and
projected.

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82 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

prise. In other words, the AIOC had to justify its thing would have the Refinery as its backcloth
continuing practices of oil exploitation and extrac- and the rhythmical pumping of oil as its musical
tion as a fundamental part of Britain’s postcolonial theme — ​the real heartbeat of Abadan.27
civilizing mission, framed as a win-­w in situation As he elaborated in his proposal for a “Film
wherein Iran exchanged its oil for the promise of about Abadan,” this sort of well-­c rafted movie
modernity. about Iran would succeed in simultaneously fulfill-
ing several of AIOC’s main public relations objec-
The Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company’s Persian Story tives. Ambitiously, Tritton saw this film as having
In 1949, AIOC officials proposed to undertake a the potential “to reach the public in cinemas and
novel documentary project that would produce the to describe Abadan to the widest possible audi-
company’s first “real” film and “avoid a straight oil ence, thus indirectly placing the AIOC before
well to petrol tank story.”25 Following a visit to the them.” What is more, he believed it would “show
AIOC’s key refinery in Abadan, Tritton developed the Iranians what is being done in the way of ame-
the idea for a prestige film that could reach the nities, housing, health services and so on, yet do
public in cinemas in England and Iran. Declaring it incidentally without underlining or making a
it to be one of the most important publicity proj- special point of it, which is suspect.” He imagined
ects the company had ever undertaken, Tritton the film’s potential to develop notions of owner-
and other company officials reveled in the notion ship and community, “[giving] both the British
that the documentary would make history as “the and Iranian inhabitants of Abadan a sense of pride
first sympathetic portrayal of Iran” ever made for a in their huge organisation and a feeling of being
public audience.26 The film would entertain audi- recognised by the outside world” and “[enabling]
ences with spectacles of industrial technology and those of the Company’s employees who have not
exotic landscapes and simultaneously demonstrate been to Abadan to realise how their colleagues live
to stockholders and general audiences at home and work, thereby adding to the cohesive ‘family’
that AIOC was the benevolent harbinger of moder- spirit.” Beyond internal use, the film, according to
nity in an otherwise backward country. Tritton, would “have considerable prestige value
For almost two years, between March 1949 for our Associated Companies, thereby helping
and Januar y 1951, AIOC officials in London sales,” and “be widely used non-­theatrically by PFB
bounced around ideas for a documentary film cen- after its commercial release.” Finally, he noted that
tered on daily life in Abadan. Initially, Tritton con- “it should be possible for the British Information
ceived of the film as a lively portrait of Abadan, the Services to use it overseas as the story of a great
refinery and adjacent company town. His objective British enterprise.” 28 In his early memos and cor-
was to create a film that reflected what he saw as respondence with AIOC executives about the film
the “real” atmosphere of the place: project, Tritton emphasized that the company had
The film might start at midnight in the Refinery great odds of reaching the general public with this
itself something full of noise and steam and heat sort of short documentary, as it was expected to re-
to set the scene. This noisy production sequence ceive wide circulation in cinemas. Evidently, mak-
could give way to the quiet of a hospital ward in ing a film with appeal to general audiences was a
the early hours with an English nurse soothing top priority for the company when undertaking
an ill and frightened Iranian girl. From there we
on-­location film productions. Tritton’s colleagues
might go, say at 5am to the dairy farm and the
went so far as to suggest that the film should in-
comfortable homely noise of milking cows. . . . Do
clude “sex, drama or other moronic-­appeal” in the
you see what I am getting at? Through the day,
sequence can fade into sequence. . . . The whole narrative to ramp up public interest.29

25. Ronald Tritton, “Film on Abadan,” 22 Sep- 27. Ronald Tritton, “Film about Abadan,” 9
tember 1949; and Ronald Tritton, “Film on the March 1949, 183091, BP Archive.
AIOC,” 12 January 1950, 183091, BP Archive.
28. Ibid.
26. Tritton, “Memo to Mr. Keating.”
29. Ibid.

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Mona Damluji • The Oil City in Focus 83

Figure 5. “The Anglo-­Iranian Oil Co.’s Film Show: Past and Present Portrayed to a Great Audience.” Petroleum Times, 9 January 1953,
35516, BP Archive

From these early stages of planning the film, refinery and eventually culminated in the evacu-
AIOC officials also expressed an explicit desire to ation of British oil company employees and the
emphasize Iranian participation in the workforce. nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951.
This fundamental element of capturing an Iranian The film’s director, Ralph Keene, reported to
presence in the film soon evolved into an assumed Tritton from the Fields in southern Iran, as their
point of view that defined the narrative altogether production was terminated ahead of schedule.
and determined the final choice for its title: Persian Keene’s colorful language and urgent tone paints
Story. The oil company’s approach to constructing a vivid picture of the mood and situation for the
a story as if from the point of view of the native AIOC film unit as they prepared to evacuate Iran:
workers would later become a hallmark of the
As the political situation was again rapidly dete-
film genre pioneered by this landmark project,
riorating, and all Company officials were asking
which ultimately worked to speak for and control
and advising us to clear out as quickly as possible,
any knowledge of the native’s experience. Persian
I reckoned our job was done and said “Finis.” And
Story thus signified a crucial turning point in the now we can’t get back to Abadan, because of the
politicization of oil films and marked the oil com- disturbances there — ​oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!!
pany’s attempt to upstage the voice of protesters Last time we weren’t allowed to stay in Fields, and
in Abadan in 1951. Early that year, just as Persian now we aren’t allowed to leave — ​w hatever can
Story filmmakers were beginning to shoot on loca- happen to us next? The rest of the Unit, with the
tion in Iran, increasing discontent about labor con- equipment, will be returning to England as soon
ditions among oil workers had reached its peak. as they can get away.30

From the beginning of production, AIOC’s British As a result AIOC screened the final cut of Persian
film crew faced obstacles that affected their ability Story in London for mass audiences only after the
to follow the intended shooting script. These ob- oil industry in Iran had been nationalized. For the
stacles ranged from troubles with equipment and film premiere “the biggest film party ever given
transportation to issues of government censorship. in Europe was organized” for audiences totaling
However, the film production was cut short when of over 11,500 in seven large West End cinemas in
the political upheaval in Iran materialized in wide- the British capital (fig. 5).31 The film continued to
spread strikes and in the takeover of the Abadan enjoy theatrical and nontheatrical distribution with

30. Ralph Keene, letter to Ronald Tritton, 14 31. See Tritton, “How We Use Films,” 465; and
April 1951, 183091, BP Archive. “The Anglo-­Iranian Co.’s Film Show: Past and
Present Portrayed to a Great Audience,” Petro-
leum Times, 9 January 1953, 35516, BP Archive.

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

84 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

extremely positive reviews, and it was selected by An early tracking shot in the film’s main se-
the Venice, Locarno, and Edinburgh film festivals quence on Abadan moves along a bustling urban
in 1952.32 As the only documentary film to portray street where Iranian pedestrians walk, shop, and
Abadan before the British evacuated in August 1951, glance at the camera as it speeds past. In other
Persian Story garnered exceptional status as a surviv- words, the shot is taken from the point of view
ing portrait of the Westernized Iranian oil city that of an automobile passing along the road without
was lost to the British company after they evacuated pause. The photographer’s distance from the
from Iran. However, as the following section will scene and quick movement of the camera along
show, AIOC’s Persian Story ultimately fails to recon- the street directs the viewer’s eye so that it will
cile the incongruity of the film’s harmonious image catch large objects centered in the frame, such
of Iranians living in the modern oil city of Abadan as colorful market stalls and shiny modern cars
and the people’s lived experience of degrading con- parked along the sidewalk (fig. 6a). Iranian men
ditions, which they endured for decades. dressed in European-­style suits stand out against
surrounding pedestrians in street clothes. The
Urban Modernity in Abadan: Reel versus Real movement of the tracking shot is so fast-­paced in
fact that darker details at the edges of the frame
Abadan, means more than oil; it means peo-
ple — ​men and women, Persians and Europeans,
are likely to slip from the viewer’s attention. Focus-
to whom Abadan is not just industry, but home. ing on a still frame from the sequence, one can
So side by side with the giant Refinery grow all see that the built environment of this local street
the other amenities of a modern city where the in Abadan suffers from badly maintained roads
races meet — ​schools and colleges, hospitals and and dilapidating building construction (fig. 6b).
clubs and clinics; and as the two peoples share the It is important to note that this continuous shot
work, so do they share the leisure. In the heart of sequence is devoid of any commentary, and as a
the oil city stands the reason for it all, the enor-
result the street captured in this sequence is never
mous purpose of all the rest: the great Refinery,
located within the context of the rest of the city.
the biggest in the world.33
The subsequent montage consists of steady
Underneath the film’s recorded script, quoted and slow panning shots in which the director fixes
above, AIOC’s filmmakers assembled a visual nar- the frame to key in and linger on the gardens
rative of Abadan through carefully constructed of a large bungalow house and a lush landscape
montages and a dynamic soundtrack. Panning and of palm trees where two Iranian women stroll
tracking shots of AIOC’s massive infrastructure of through the scene, pushing prams and wearing
rigs, pipelines, and the giant refinery establish the recognizably European-­style dresses and hairstyles
visible evidence for the narrator’s claim that the (fig. 7a). The scene is set in a quintessential Euro-
oil city stands as “a great temple to the Twentieth pean garden suburb, yet one located in the desert
Century god of oil.”34 Abadan is next portrayed as of Iran. Other than the brief moment in which
a space of modern everyday life in Iran. Overall the camera catches the smokestacks of one of the
the film conveys lucid impressions of bright, clean, world’s largest oil refineries in the background,
and ordered spaces and a harmonious society of the long visual sequence of Abadan renders invis-
British and Iranian oil company employees living ible the atmosphere of industrial machinery, pol-
together. A close analysis of the visual sequenc- lution, and noise that constantly loom over these
ing, framing, pacing, and composition in Persian spaces in reality (fig. 7b).
Story reveals how modern life in the real oil city of In Persian Story modernity is visually con-
Abadan is selectively represented in the reel space structed in terms of legible spatial arrangements
of the oil film. and the transformation and liberation of the fe-

32. See ibid. 33. Ralph Keene, “Anglo-­I ranian Oil Com- 34. Ibid.
pany Film: Persian Story (Commentary as Re-
corded),” 1952, Persian Story microfiche, British
Film Institute National Archive, London.

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Mona Damluji • The Oil City in Focus 85

Figure 6. Stills from the street tracking shot of Persian Story (1952), dir. Ralph Keene. © Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd. Image courtesy of
the British Petroleum Video Library, London

Figure 7. Stills from the suburb sequence of Persian Story (1952), dir. Ralph Keene. © Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd. Image courtesy of
the British Petroleum Video Library, London

male Iranian subject from tropes of the veiled ish imperial model, provided in this case by the
woman. This gendered notion of modernity in oil company.35 The ordered and legible spaces of
Abadan is constructed through images of Ira- the garden suburb in the Iranian oil city represent
nian women in the recognizable roles of full-­t ime material evidence of a modern way of life compris-
mothers, cheery nurses, and swimmers at leisure. ing immediately recognizable symbols: the large
These representations of Iranian women clearly single-­f amily home, the automobile, the garden,
reference contemporary visual tropes of quintes- the tailored dress, and the two-­piece swimsuit
sential modern women found in popular British (fig. 7c). The film’s impressionistic representation
(and US) mainstream movies and advertising. of Abadan is created through a sequence of tightly
This gendered picture of modernity works to sug- constructed montages featuring static spatial and
gest Iran’s mimicry of modern European values, social environments. The film disguises the dy-
in that women walk, dress, and live as if they were namic or problematic aspects of modernization in
just like the women in a modern garden suburb Iran and more specifically avoids the elephant in
outside of London. In other words, the oil city fits the room: the troubled relationship between the
within the paradigm of colonial urbanism in cit- oil company and Iranian employees that ultimately
ies such as Algiers and New Delhi in that moder- bolstered widespread support among Iranian oil
nity exists as a condition dependent upon a Brit- workers for the nationalization of the oil industry.

35. See Nezar AlSayyad, Forms of Dominance:

On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colo-
nial Enterprise (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1992).

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

86 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

As discussed in the introduction, living con-

ditions for most of AIOC’s Iranian oil workers
were extremely poor and their neighborhoods
were strictly segregated from those inhabited by
the British employees of the company. The major-
ity of indigenous laborers did not receive housing
and lived in slums on the periphery of the refin-
ery where few or no services were provided (fig. 8).
Manucher Farmanfarmaian documents that for
most refinery workers at that time, “wages were
50 cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick
leave, no disability compensation. The workers
lived in a shanty town . . . without running water
or electricity.”36 The experience of Iranian laborers
Figure 8. Slum conditions in Abadan, 1951. Bamberg, The History differed entirely from that of the British adminis-
of the British Petroleum Company, 2:448. © BP plc
trative personnel and technicians and of the mi-
nority of Iranians hired for more technical posi-
tions or married to British staff.
As a critical study by architectural historian
Mark Crinson has demonstrated, Barwada — ​the
planned garden suburb pictured in Persian Story
that housed this minority of Iranian employees
and their families — ​was a space of exception and
by no means represented the norm for Abadan’s
Iranian residents.37 AIOC’s chief architect planned
and built this neighborhood in the late 1940s as
an experimental, integrated residential area in
the otherwise spatially and socially segregated oil
city (fig. 9). In this garden suburb, selected non-­
European staff could live side-­by-­side in the same
bungalow-­style homes that Europeans had occu-
Figure 9. AIOC’s architect planned the experimental residential
pied in specially planned and isolated neighbor-
enclave of Barwada as an integrated garden suburb for upper-­ hoods since the 1920s. By 1951, with a city popu-
level Iranian and British staff. As seen here, Barwada is composed lation over 200,000 inhabitants (of which 65,000
of a regular plan featuring large bungalow homes, and broad
were company employees), fewer than 20 percent
roads circumscribe and enclose the neighborhood to spatially
segregate the suburb from the rest of the city. Mark Crinson,
lived in the planned residential districts where the
“Abadan: Planning and Architecture under the Anglo-­Iranian AIOC provided housing. The integrated plan for
Oil Company,” Planning Perspectives 12 (1997). Original photo by Barwada was exceptional because all other living
Wilson, Mason and Partners, courtesy of Taylor & Francis Ltd., quarters for the Iranian workforce were segregated
www.informaworld.com
from those occupied by the company’s British em-
ployees. Crinson details that from early settlement
until the 1950s, European staff lived in isolated
bungalow areas mainly to the west of the refinery
with their own system of buses, markets, cinemas,
clubs, and so forth. To the east of the refinery, Ira-

36. Manucher Farmanfarmaian, Blood and Oil: 37. See Mark Crinson, “Abadan: Planning and
Inside the Shah’s Iran (New York: Modern Li- Architecture under the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Com-
brary, 1999), 184– ​85. pany,” Planning Perspectives 12 (1997): 347– ​57.

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

Mona Damluji • The Oil City in Focus 87

nian AIOC laborers were left to settle informally the tens of thousands of people outside of Iran
in a densely populated town with few services and who watched the film as a factual documentary
little infrastructure. Although some company account.
housing was provided for Iranian staff, the great
majority of company resources was poured into Eu- Conclusion
ropean staff housing.38 Cinema is a critical lens through which urban his-
Persian Story glosses over the complex, dy- torians can investigate how the social and spatial
namic, and troubled socioeconomic conditions dimensions of cities have been constructed. As
that underpinned the role of AIOC in the produc- visual documents of urban transformation, the
tion of lived space around the Abadan refinery and oil films produced by AIOC profile moderniza-
in the making of the city. In the film modernity is tion projects in the built environment at a critical
constructed as a static material condition and de- point in Iran’s modern history. Oil company offi-
picted as fixed and unproblematic. Framing the cials claimed that they were working to counter-
film within Crinson’s critical analysis of Abadan’s act negative stereotypes of Iran and its population
spatial development, in fact, informs a particular prevalent in other media by projecting images of
reading of the film. Persian Story pairs selective Middle Eastern modernity. Yet in reality the com-
footage depicting both the manicured garden pany created representations of urban modernity
suburb and the street running through the town in ways that reinforced the link between modern-
center to suggest that these spaces somehow blend ization and the role of the foreign oil companies
together. It does not examine or explain how these on the one hand, and the former’s dependency on
spaces relate to one another or how the inhabit- the latter on the other. This is clearly illustrated
ants of either space are kept apart and socially seg- in Persian Story where modernity in Abadan is
regated in their everyday lives. Persian Story privi- equated to a material and gendered social condi-
leges the story of everyday life in the exceptional tion contingent upon the presence of the British
space of the garden suburb, situated in the context oil company. AIOC’s film about Abadan premiered
of the broader city without any indication of the to thousands of viewers as a portrait of modern life
social and spatial barriers that define Abadan as a in the oil city. Yet, as this article shows, the docu-
segregated city. Ultimately this depiction serves as mentary provided a very limited and skewed narra-
a means to suit the company’s aim to popularize tive of the ways in which Iranians really lived, the
the idea that in addition to extracting oil, AIOC spaces they occupied, and how they participated in
played a civilizing role in Iran: as the harbinger of the making of the oil city.
Western notions of modern spatial order and so- Persian Story was the first oil film to attempt to
cial conventions. deal explicitly with the representation of Iranians
By privileging the visual narrative focused experiencing life in the oil city of Abadan. It thus
on the suburb over the spaces of the city where served as a precedent for similar cultural projects
most Iranian workers lived, the film spotlights the carried out by oil companies in the region, such
intervention of utopian garden city design while as the Iraq Petroleum Company and ARAMCO
otherwise ignoring the broader context of change in Saudi Arabia. Thus, Persian Story should not be
and the problems the company encountered in ac- dismissed merely as an example of propaganda
commodating Abadan’s booming population of but rather viewed in terms of a set of discourses,
laborers. As the turbulent events of 1951 suggest, choices, images, and practices related to the oil
the utopian experiment in the Barwada suburb ul- city. Ultimately, in attempting to control the image
timately failed to ease the greater underlying ten- of the Iranian experience in Abadan, the AIOC
sions of urban segregation and inequality on the circulated the film among audiences in theatrical
ground. Yet the portrait in Persian Story of Abadan and nontheatrical distribution circuits around the
as a harmonious garden city was impressed upon world as a visual narrative that responded to the

38. See ibid., 342– ​46.

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 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

88 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

sociopolitical moment in which it was produced.

By examining oil films within the broader context
of current understandings of the modernization
of oil cities, we can further understand how they
worked to privilege certain spaces and processes
while rendering invisible more critical questions
about the problems and consequences of urban-
ization. In this sense oil films are inextricably tied
to the same relationships of power and representa-
tion that were shaping the cities on the ground.
Ultimately, it can be said that this project of film-
making was critically embedded in the larger en-
terprise of oil development, shaping discourses on
modernity and the city.

This article is based on a paper that was pre-

sented at the Smithsonian Institution in Wash-
ington, DC, as part of the 2010 Historians of Is-
lamic Art and Architecture symposium.

Published by Duke University Press