Slippages in Time: Oil, Sovereignty and Media

Screening and Conversation with Sanaz Sohrabi

About the Film

An Incomplete Calendar*, the first feature-length film by artist-scholar Sanaz Sohrabi, unfurls the remarkable history behind the production of the Rhymes and Songs for OPEC musical vinyl, recorded in 1980 by Petróleos de Venezuela.

 Building on her ongoing research on visual cultures of resource sovereignty from the Global South, Sohrabi began visiting Venezuela for research and filming, and had the honor of partnering with Central University of Venezuela as a co-producer of this film. Through this partnership, she was granted unprecedented access to filming inside the Aula Magna musical hall, which is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, and where  Rhymes and Songs for OPEC was recorded. 

An Incomplete Calendar pieces together a diverse repertoire of unseen archives such as newsreels, music, stamps, and anticolonial oil magazines from Iran, Venezuela, and the Arab world to assemble an audio-visual collage of nationalization movements between 1950-1970 wherein the political economy of oil played a significant role in shaping the visual grammars of resource sovereignty. The film is shaped around conversations with prominent historians, filmmakers, journalists, and former members of the Central University of Venezuela's Concert Choir, who draw connections, offer reflections, and share untold stories about oil’s capacities and limitations for worldbuilding across the Third World. 

*This screening is of a work-in-progress and is not the final version of the film. 

About the Artist

Sanaz Sohrabi is a researcher of visual culture and an artist-filmmaker. Working with essay film and installations, she explores the shifting and migratory paths of images, situating them within a continuum of their historical relations and archival temporalities. Sohrabi is currently working on a feature-length documentary that maps an unlikely geopolitical calendar of political affinities, competing and contradictory national projects wherein oil was both the agent of imperial power and the catalyst for anticolonial political projects.

This event is part of Non-Aligned Visions, a multimedia installation on display from September 16-19, 2025 at Public Trust that features contemporary artistic explorations of transnational solidarities from the 1960s and 1970s. Bringing together the work of archival researchers and visual media-makers, this project unearths memories of the past to guide us in the struggles ahead. More information about the installation can be found on Public Trust's website.