Black Sea Files (Ursula Biemann, 2005), The Host (Miranda Pennell, 2015)

Sunday 7 november 2021, “Black Sea Files” (2005) by Ursula Biemann (42 minutes).”The Host” (2015) by Miranda Pennell (60 minutes). Free admission. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30

Both these movies are experimental documentaries about oil. In overgeneralized terms they both pose and attempt to answer the question: “If the modern world stands on a base of fossil fuel use, shouldn’t we assume that fossil fuels have their influence on every aspect of human life?” It’s a paranoid question but in some ways productive. “Black Sea Files” is about the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and how peoples (including the filmmaker’s) lives are organized around and under it. “The Host” is about the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s (later to be renamed British Petroleum) presence in Iran. The director, Miranda Pennell, lived on site in Iran as a child as both her parents worked for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Building her case on old photographs and archive entries, Pennell explores the violence commited on employees, Iranian citizens, and her own parents.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net