Shown as part of the multi-day, multi-venue Energy Film Series. Washington, D.C. Premiere Imagine 2,000 oil rigs, 300 kilometers of bridges, rusty Soviet-era trucks rolling back and forth, nine-story building blocks, a huge canteen, thousands of oil workers, a towering cultural palace, a lemonade factory and a green park…all nestled in a city in the middle of the Caspian Sea. Commissioned by Stalin in 1949, Oil Rocks is the first and largest offshore oil city ever built. Despite two-thirds of its infrastructure having been reclaimed by the sea, the city still stands as a vast, sprawling island of oil platforms. For the first time in its 60-year history, a Western film crew has been granted access to document the city in its entirety. Oil Rocks – City Above the Sea recounts the experience of this crew capturing a real ‘Oil Atlantis.’ Combining black-and-white archival film from the Soviet era along with contemporary footage, the film tells the story of this timeless place and of some of its amazing inhabitants.