North East Film Archive

British organisation and moving image archive

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, across Durham, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and the Tees Valley. In July 2012 the archive, originally known as the Northern Region Film and Television Archive merged with the Yorkshire Film Archive.

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 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, 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 had a staff of two (one full time and one part time), both 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). The combined collection currently contains over 50,000 titles – 17,000 held by YFA, and 33,000 held by NEFA – ranging from films of the late 1890s, to recent footage of changing landscapes and life across both regions.

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. Acquisition. There is no system of legal deposit for audiovisual media in the UK, and so moving image archives have to identify appropriate materials for preservation and persuade their owners to deposit them. Preservation. Film, magnetic tape and digital optical media are among the most technically complex of any archival medium to preserve for the long term. NEFA staff carry out this task through a combination of preserving original media and copying where this is necessary to prevent the loss of content. Access. This includes dealing with viewing requests from individual researchers, organising public screenings and licensing material to film and TV programme makers, and for online use. Access work can also involve negotiating copyright clearance and overcoming technical issues needed to provide high quality access copies. 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.