337 IJIA 8 (2) pp. 337–361 Intellect Limited 2019 International Journal of Islamic Architecture Volume 8 Number 2 © 2019 Intellect Ltd DiT Papers. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijia.8.2.337_1 HUMA GUPTA Massachusetts Institute of Technology Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development Abstract This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settle- ments inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek archi- tect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizen- ship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solu- tion to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media. Keywords development cinema housing Iraq migration Constantinos A. Doxiadis