Northern Region Film and Television Archive

The Northern Region Film and Television Archive (NRFTA) 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.

History and overview

The NRFTA 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), (TWAS, the county record office for Tyne and Wear), Trade Films (see below) and (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, . A temperature and humidity controlled vault facility was built for the NRFTA 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...
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