Documentaries can make their mark in the Arab World despite scepticism over lack of funding and disinterested advertisers, said an independent producer. Tarif Sayed, Owner and Managing Director, The Frame, said broadcasters and producers in the Arab World are able to compete worldwide, but there is still a lack of confidence on their part towards the quality of their productions. The Frame, which recently held the screening of productions from Middle East and North Africa for the semi-final stage of Emmy Awards, has announced that it will provide Dh500,000 to support aspiring and promising young Arab talent. Sayed said: "The money is not much as we are a private company and are not supported by the government." However, the significance of the award, according to Sayed, is in the fact that it forces applicants to think of the business feasibility of their ideas. "The proposal should include an idea of how to market the project. The Frame will provide the expertise and the technical support, which usually eat up the majority of the funding, to help the projects," he said. The applicants should be Arabs living in the UAE. "The most important condition is that applicants should submit Arabic-language content. It does not matter if the applicants are Arabs or not as long as the idea submitted is in Arabic language," said Sayed. "A major obstacle that prevents documentaries from being successful in the Arab world is their dependence on government funding. The few broadcasters interested in acquiring documentaries, such as Al Jazeera Channel, do not question the costs of production. "This has a created a culture where producers seek to be commissioned for work, rather than producing and marketing documentaries and creating innovative ways to make them profitable," said Sayed. He added: "However, those broadcasters have a limited capacity to accommodate all the work being produced in the region." Documentaries make revenue out of Pay-TV subscriptions rather than advertising, with advertisers preferring to pay for slots in higher rating entertainment programmes instead. "There is no Pay-TV in the Arab World but documentaries can still sell if they are executed in an entertaining and intriguing way that attracts viewers. "Moreover, channels specialising in documentaries such as Discovery do not rely on subscriptions to cover multi-million dollars productions. They sell copyrights, and translated versions to all different markets." Sayed said: "We can adopt similar models in the Arab World provided we start looking at projects that make commercial sense and utilise various forms of marketing without compromising the quality." He said Arab documentaries are subject to high demand internationally. "International productions sometimes commission production companies to execute segments from the region or send crews down here. Instead, why don't we fill that gap with regional productions and translate them to other languages?