Petrocinema

<i>Petrocinema</i>presents a collection of essays concerning the close relationship between the oil industry and modern media-especially film. Since the early 1920s oil extracting companies such as Standard Oil Royal Dutch/Shell ConocoPhillips or Statoil have been producing and circulating moving images for various purposes including research and training safety process observation or promotion. Such industrial and sponsored films include documentaries educationals and commercials that formed part of a larger cultural project to transform the image of oil exploitation creating media interfaces that would allow corporations to coordinate their goals with broader cultural and societal concerns. Falling outside of the domain of conventional cinema such films firmly belong to an emerging canon of sponsored and educational film and media that has developed over the past decade. Contributing to this burgeoning field of sponsored and educational film scholarship chapters in this book bear on the intersecting cultural histories of oil extraction and media history by looking closely at moving image imaginaries of the oil industry from the earliest origins or spills in the 20th century to today's post industrial petromelancholia.