Northern Region Film and Television Archive

NRFTA Logo

The North East Film Archive (NEFA) is a not-for-profit organisation which exists to collect, preserve and provide access to film, television and other moving image material related to the history of a region of England, which is defined as the Tees Valley area and the counties of Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear. Since July 2012 the archive merged with The YFA(Yorkshire Film Archive), a registered charity (no. 1093468), and now comes under the YFA Banner and charity, Hence the name change to NEFA.

History and overview

The NEFA was founded in January 1998 as an unofficial consortium of four bodies which already held substantial film and television collections within the region: what was then the University of Teesside (now Teesside University), Tyne and Wear Archives Service (TWAS, the county record office for Tyne and Wear), Trade Films (see below) and Cumbria Archives Service (the county record office for Cumbria). Initial funding was provided by Northern Arts (what was then the UK Government's regional agency for distributing public arts funding in the north-east of England), and the organisation began life with a full-time curator and a part-time archivist. In 2001, responsibility for distributing core funding to the English regional film archives passed from Northern Arts to the newly formed UK Film Council's regional agency, Northern Film and Media. A temperature and humidity controlled vault facility was built for the NEFA on the Teesside campus during 2003, and was formally opened the following year. In December 2003, NRFTA Ltd. was formed as a company limited by guarantee (no. 04994213), thus making the archive an independent legal entity. In February 2006, responsibility for providing a moving image archive service to Cumbria passed from the NRFTA to the North West Film Archive. As of February 2010 the NEFA has a staff of two (one full-time and one part-time), both of whom are based at Teesside University. The NEFA is one of a network of eight regional film archives in England. It is an 'emerging archive' member institution of the UK Film Archive Forum.In July 2012, NEFA merged with the Yorkshire Film Archive (YFA), a registered charity (no. 1093468), and now comes under the YFA banner and charity. Together,they have a growing collection currently containing over 50,000 titles - 17,000 held by YFA, and 33,000 held by NEFA - ranging from films made by the early film pioneers of the late 1890s, to recent footage of changing landscapes and life across both regions.

Current operations

The NEFA is based at Teesside University in Middlesbrough, where most of the collection is stored. Limited storage facilities are also operated at Tyne and Wear Archives Service in Newcastle upon Tyne as well, but all work on the collection now takes place at Teesside. Viewing facilities for members of the public are available at Newcastle, but preservation and cataloguing work no longer takes place there. As with any archive, the NEFA undertakes three core activities.

The NEFA is funded from a combination of sources, including public money, revenue from commercial footage licensing to broadcasters (all other paid-for services are charged on a cost-covering basis) and 'in kind' contributions from its constituent organisations, principally Teesside University and Tyne and Wear Archives Service. The NEFA's work is overseen by a board of directors, and its permanent staff are all employees of Teesside University.

The collection

The collection policies of the English regional film archives are all broadly similar. They do not collect fictional feature films or TV programmes produced outside their regions and/or intended for network broadcast: this is the responsibility of the National Film and Television Archive. The NEFA's collection consists mainly of regional TV news and regionally produced network output, industrial, promotional, educational and advertising films, and amateur film and video. Among its major collections are:

NEFA Curators


External links

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