International Council of Archives

The United Arab Emirates National Film Library and Archive (UNFLA): A Collaborative Foundational Project

Since 2008, the United Arab Emirates has invested over a billion dollars into building a film industry. But long before 2008, there were several UAE citizens making films, and those films today are scattered around the Gulf and hard to find. The goal of the United Arab Emirates National Film and Library (UNFLA), based at the Zayed University library in Abu Dhabi, is to find, collect, and archive these films as a means of preserving and sharing UAE heritage. In addition, all current and future films will become a part of this archive. The UNFLA will offer study opportunities for Zayed University faculty and students and will provide valuable material for researchers internationally and across multiple disciplines.

The UNFLA expects to acquire and preserve films by the nation’s leading filmmakers, among them Ali Mostafa, Nawaf Al-Janahi, Nayla Al Khaja and Nujoom Alghanem. Hollywood blockbusters that have been produced in association with the UAE's leading production companies, like Image Nation and Filmworks, including The Help, Contagion, Fair Game, Syriana and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, will be in the collection along with locally made films. Line-ups from the Emirates Film Competition, the Gulf Film Festival, and the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival will also be represented. For the purposes of the two-year grant project, approximately 400 films will be collected, ranging from one minute shorts to feature length films.
The UNFLA, which is supported by a two-year grant from Zayed University’s 2012 Research Incentive fund, is coordinated by grant team members Professor Alia Yunis from the ZU College of Communications, Ms. Özge Calafato, Abu Dhabi Film Festival’s Programming Director, ZU Librarian David Oldenkamp, and ZU University Archivist Heidi Butler. Professor Yunis and Ms. Calafato, with their existing connections in the film community, are currently collecting intensively for the film archive and tracking down filmmakers to obtain rights agreements and other materials. The library and archive tasks of organizing, cataloging, and preservation will come in later stages of the project.
Follow the project’s progress at the UNFLA Facebook page .

By Heidi Butler, MSLS, CA
University Archivist, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates