Ti22 Films may not be a household name for many readers, but among the local filmmaking industry, the Dubai production house is something of a trailblazer. It just won an impressive eighth award at the New York Festivals International Television & Film Awards for Flying a Dream, a documentary charting 75 years of aviation in Dubai.
The film contains some fascinating titbits of trivia: did you know that when Dubai, under the leadership of Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum Al Maktoum, signed its open-skies agreement with Great Britain in 1937, it was the first such agreement in global aviation history? Similar agreements would eventually be signed with more than 170 countries, opening the emirate up to international air traffic and helping Dubai to become the global aviation hub it is today. Aviation currently accounts for 28 per cent of Dubai’s gross domestic product, a useful factoid to reel off the next time a family member or friend in the West comes out with the common misconception that the emirate is awash with oil wealth.
Supporting cast
The film isn’t all facts and figures, though, and its producer, Reim El Houni, notes that her team was careful not to make a film that would only appeal to the most ardent plane-spotter. “There is a lot of archive footage, of course,” she says. “But it’s not just archive footage. We tried to make the film more interesting to the man on the street by wrapping it round the narrative of a boy telling the history of Dubai through stories his grandfather told him, and not get too bogged down in the technical side.”
The film was commissioned by Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA), which certainly made life a lot easier for El Houni’s team. The crew had full access to the authority’s own archive footage, as well as help with accessing the archives of other government organisations such as Dubai TV. The team was also able to film interviews with key industry figures – from the director general of DCAA to the top brass at Emirates – as well as shoot footage at the airport itself, an option that is not always available and can involve a lot more paperwork without such a high-profile supporter.
“The authority were great clients and really wanted to do something impactful,” says El Houni. “They had a big celebration of the 75-year anniversary, where they screened the film and invited an audience of every major living figure from the local aviation industry and a lot of sheikhs and dignitaries. It’s great to make a film for someone who really cares about it.”
Striking gold
The award, at one of the industry’s most prestigious events, is the icing on the cake for El Houni and her team. “There’s a really high quality of entries, which come from over 50 countries. That’s what makes these awards so important – we’re no longer competing just with our local rivals but with the best from all around the world,” she says. “This is the eighth one Ti22 has won and we’ve been a finalist eight times, too, but this is only our second gold award, so that’s particularly satisfying.
“Winning the award is very much a team thing. We had a medium-sized team on the shoot – a crew of eight, the director Sofia de Fay and two producers, one focusing on the archive footage and the other on the live shoots.
“We’re really lucky to have such great crews here. A lot of people think we don’t have that, but everyone we used was from within the local industry and we’ve won another major international award – which speaks for itself. All our previous wins have been using local crews, too, and I really do believe we have a strong enough industry here to say there’s no need to bring people in from abroad.”
If you weren’t lucky enough to receive a copy of the film from DCAA, you can still watch it by going to Ti22 Films’s YouTube channel.
cnewbould@thenational.ae