Scenes of Extraction, Original title in Farsi: صحنه های استخراج , ”Sahnehaye Estekhraj,” Essay Film, 43 minutes, DCP with 5.1 sound, Canada/Iran, 2023
Some images above have been reproduced from the bp archive. Copy Right BP plc, BP International Limited, and the artist.
Between 1901 and 1951, the British controlled oil operations in Iran expanded their geological expeditions and geophysical methods for locating commercially viable oil reserves across its entire oil concession. “Scenes of Extraction” takes the viewer on an archival stroll into the British Petroleum Archives to unearth the still and moving images that documented this expansive colonial network of geological explorations that spanned across Iran, but also reached other British oil concessions in Papua and South East Asia. The film traces the technical and social entanglement between the infrastructures of oil and the camera during the operations of British Petroleum across the Iranian oil belt. “Scenes of Extraction” weaves through decades of archival documents to parse out the visual history of the “Reflection Seismography” method for oil exploration which was heavily tested across the Iranian oil belt despite its destructive and probable nature. A technical legacy that is still heavily utilized in fracking and deep-sea mining enterprises globally and is the backbone of the global energy complex.
“Scenes of Extraction” focuses on the parallel production of geological and ethnographic surveys, both through amateur geological footage and official film surveys produced by BP. Situated at the nexus between science and technology studies and media archaeology, the film creates an archival constellation with previously unseen images and film footage taken during these seismographic tests. “Scenes of Extraction” creates CGI maps and spatial renderings by inputting the early geological aerial survey photographs and panorama films taken across the Iranian oil concession in an AI software. By blending the archival and speculative modes of representing the geological past, the film reveals the gaps and discrepancies between the archival and lived histories of extraction and the ecological ruination of its aftermath. Reading the political economy of images in relation to extraction of crude oil, “Scenes of Extraction” evokes the history of imperial and colonial extractive industries in relation to the history of photography and archives, both as embodied technologies of extraction and dispossession in and of themselves.
“Scenes of Extraction” is the second episode of a trilogy of essay films that unpack the relationship between political economy of photography, archival technologies, and visual history of resource extraction in Iran. The first episode is "One Image, Two Acts" (2020) which has been screened in over two dozen film festivals and has won seven awards since its World premiere at Montréal International Documentary Film Festival in November 2020.
“Scenes of Extraction” is a film commission by VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine, Montréal.
Screening History:
World Premiere: Berlinale Forum Expanded, Feb 21st, 2023
20th Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival, Poland, May 12th-21st 2023
Blacklight Photo Festival, Tampere, Finland, June 18 2023
(North American Premiere and nominated for Best Experimental Film) BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia, August 5 2023
(Latin American Premiere): FRONTEIRA Documentary Film Festival, Brasilia, August 2023
(UK Premiere) Open City Documentary Film Festival, London, September 10th, 2023
(Italian Premiere in Main Competition): The Archivio Aperto Film Festival: The Future is Memory, Bologna, Italy, Oct 2023
Middle East Studies Association Film Festival, Oct-Nov, 2023
Art and science exhibition, Cultural Center of Belgrade, Serbia, Oct-Nov 2023
35th Ljubljana Biennale Film Program curated by Exit Frame Collective, Museum of Modern Art, Slovenia, November 17 2023
“Visualizing Extraction,” Film screening and conversation with Philip Scheffner, Filmhaus, Cologne, Dec 12 2023
(Scottish Premiere) Glasgow Film Festival: Gestures of Memory, Glasgow, March 1st 2024
(expanded cinema installation) Alchemy Film and Moving Images Festival, Hawick, Scotland, May 2-5 2024
Reviews and interviews:
Review of Scenes of Extraction at Glasgow Film Festival, 2024
“British Film Institute’s Best Video Essays of 2023,” BFI, 2023
“Review of Archivio Aperto Film Festival" (in Italian), Written by Luca Prono, October 2023
“Disrupting the archive: Miranda Pennell’s Trouble and Sanaz Sohrabi’s Scenes of Extraction,” Written by Henrietta Williams for Open City, Sep 2023
“Open City Documentary Festival 2023: The Art of Non-Fiction,” Review of Open City by Alex Fletcher in Art Monthly, October 2023
“Unmasking Petro-Utopias in Iran: Searching for Acts of Refusal and Solidarity in the British Petroleum Archives,” Ajam Media Collective, August 2023
“Unearthing the Substrata of Images: Interview with Sanaz Sohrabi,” EUME - Trafo – Blog for Transregional Research, 2023
“Film Show 024: Berlinale 2023, Part 1,” Review of Scenes of Extraction’s World Premiere by Michael Metzger, Tone Glow, 2023
“BERLINALE + WDK 2023 : PARTIE 6", Review of Scenes of Extraction’s World Premiere by Olivier Thibodeau, Panorama-cinema, 2023
“Sanaz Sohrabi on Scenes of Extraction,” Interview with Sonia Shechet Epstein, Museum of Moving Image NY, 2023
“Forum Expanded: An Atypical Orbit,” Interview between Ala Younis and Ulrich Ziemons, Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, Feb 2023
Trailer of Scenes of Extraction: Here.
For a press kit and viewing screener please kindly send me an email: s.sohrabi.studio (at) gmail (dot) com