“An Incomplete Calendar” starts with a song in Caracas and ends with an undelivered letter from Tehran to Baghdad. Culminating over six years of archival research around oil, the film explores the remarkable and untold story of a musical vinyl titled “Rhymes and Songs for OPEC,” recorded in 1980 by the Concert Choir of Central University of Venezuela to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), established in Baghdad in 1960.

The film interweaves forgotten songs and shadow archives to tell a different story of oil, not as a commodity but rather as a political leverage that was used for the liberation struggles in Palestine and building Pan-Arab solidarity, a transnational project that was shattered by the triumph of neoliberal economics in 1970s.

This is the final episode of a trilogy of essay films by Sanaz Sohrabi that unpack the relationship between political economy of images, archival technologies, and visual cultures of resource extraction in Iran and broader West Asia.