Petrocinema

Marina Dahlquist is a Professor of Cinema Studies at the Department for Media Studies at Stockholm University, Sweden. She recently published The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema: North America and Europe in the 1910s and 1920s (2020, with Joel Frykholm), Corporeality in Early Cinema: Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form (2018, with Doron Galili, Jan Olsson, and Valentine Robert), and Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze (2013).Patrick Vonderau is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Halle, Germany. Recent book publications include, among others, Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures (2020, with B. Florin and Y. Zimmermann), Films that Sell: Moving Pictures and Advertising (2016, with N. de Klerk and B. Florin), and Films that Work: Industrial Film and the Productivity of Media (2011, with V. Hediger). He is also an editor of the German scholarly journal Montage AV.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionMarina Dahlquist and Patrick VonderauOil Rhetoric Chapter 1: Oil Media ArchivesMona DamlujiChapter 2: “All the Earmarks of Propaganda”: Teapot Dome, The World Struggle for Oil, and Defining Corporate RhetoricJeremy GroskopfChapter 3: Oil Aesthetics: BP, Greenpark Productions, and the Projection of PrestigePatrick Russell and Steve FoxonAdvertisements and Sponsorship Chapter 4: On the Road with Mickey and Donald: Walt Disney, Standard Oil and the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939Susan OhmerChapter 5: Petroleum and Hollywood Stardom: Making Way for Oil Consumption through Visual CultureMarina DahlquistChapter 6: The American Petroleum Institute: Sponsored Motion Pictures in the Service of Public RelationsGregory A. WallerChapter 7: Industrial Film and the Politics of VisibilityBrian R. JacobsonTransformation of Oil Politics Chapter 8: “In India's Life and Part of It:” Film and Visual Publicity at Burmah-Shell from the 1920s to the 1950sRavi VasudevanChapter 9: Creating Partners in Progress: Shell Communicating Oil during Nigeria’s IndependenceRudmer CanjelsChapter 10: “Fuelling Apartheid:” Documentary Film in the Service of ApartheidJacqueline MaingardSelected BibliographyIndex

Petrocinema is a necessary collection that explores the long history of media produced by oil industries around the world. It is edited by significant, established scholars with considerable experience, and it brings together noteworthy scholars from around the world. The brilliant essays encompass detailed histories of oil-fuelled media (in the US, Nigeria, and India) alongside conceptual exploration of the role of media in fostering carbon-based economies accelerating in the post-WWII years. The book is a significant resource for scholars interested in a host of things – including the history of oil extraction, corporate propaganda, non-theatrical and documentary cinema – and its exploration of the media produced by some of the most significant corporate entities of the last three centuries is a significant and necessary task.