Old TV recordings featured in Art Dubai

Dubai: Television recordings of UAE life from the 1970s to 1990s were showcased on the concluding day of Art Dubai.

Hind Mezaina, a blogger from Dubai, featured Emirati Aqeel Al Showab's collection that dates back to the early 1970s.

Al Showab started chronicling life in the country when he was a teenager, recording events broadcast on television including state visits, entertainment shows and sport on VHS/Betamax — both now obsolete video formats.

Hind edited Al Showab's collection of 10,000 hours of recordings into a three-and-a-half hour video titled Mass Medium: Emirati TV on Home Video.

She told Gulf News, "It provides an insight into the culture — what people watched on television during that period before the invasion of satellite channels.

Boney M

"It is a miniscule part of his collection of music shows, documentary, interviews, etc. There is even a recording of disco era vocal group Boney M performing in front of a studio audience." Art Dubai approached Hind for the video project following a video entry about Al Showab in her blog (www.theculturist.com).