Filmmaker and archival researcher Ariel West will develop a new project with the UCLA Film & Television Archive as its 2025 artist-in-residence. “Petroleum Archive” will be a film that investigates Los Angeles’ oil-driven history through archival footage and new material filmed across the city.
The project draws from the Archive’s Hearst Metrotone News and KTLA Newsfilm collections to examine how oil has shaped the city’s environment, economy and infrastructure. West will weave this material with contemporary footage of preservation work and urban landscapes, linking past and present.
“Growing up in Los Angeles, I saw pumpjacks and heard stories of its oil-covered past,” West said. “Yet I hadn’t realized how deeply oil shaped the city until I began tracing its footprints through public health, real estate and the built environment.”
West, now based in Queens, worked as an archival researcher on Cynthia Madansky’s “Index:trace” and co-produced and edited the film “Fattoush.” A Bard College graduate, West extended her thesis project “Petro-Stained City” — which examined the local oil economy’s unevenly distributed environmental and public health effects — into a 12-week reading series for Metabolic Studios in Los Angeles.
The residency invites one emerging artist annually to work on-site with materials from the Archive’s major collections. West’s two-week visit includes research planning, archival training, digitization access and opportunities for public engagement. Work will take place at the Archive’s headquarters in Westwood and the Packard Humanities Institute in Santa Clarita.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive, a division of UCLA Library, stewards over 500,000 film and television items and presents public programs at the Billy Wilder Theater inside the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
Read the full release at the Archive’s website.
