Oil – A Symphony in Motion

director: M.G. MacPherson

original title: Oil – A Symphony in Motion

year: 1933

running time: 7 min.

synopsis

“I am a commodity that people call oil – and this is my saga,” says the protagonist of this amateur film shot in the spirit of the Soviet aesthetic in Los Angeles. In the intertitles, oil continues to speak to man, leaving him in no doubt as to who the master is. The celebration of a fast-paced, exciting world with the liquid “bones of ages past” running through its veins becomes somewhat bitter.

biography

M. G. MacPherson was an amateur film enthusiast. Together with Jean D. Michelson, founder of Artkino, they made several experimental films in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including War Under the Sea (1929), The Trap (1930), and Oil (1930–1933).

more about film

director:

M.G. MacPherson

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