Taylor_Rotha, Air Outpost (1937)

Rotha visited Sharjah in 1932 while he was making another film for Imperial Airways, Contact. Impressed by the location, he decided to film Sharjah to make Air Outpost. Rotha’s initial 1932 visit was one month after the airway’s inauguration and prior to the completion of construction on the Mahatta Fort, forcing him to spend the overnight stop in a tent.

Mahatta Fort in the early 1990s, prior to restoration.
Air Outpost was intended to present a « dramatic but easily understandable microcosm of civil aviation’s development ». Other films in the high-profile series commissioned by Imperial Airways included The Future’s in the Air and African Skyways. All three films had their premiere together at the Piccadilly Theatre in London on 12 November 1937 in front of an audience of 1,000 guests. Air Outpost was unusual for Imperial Airways’ documentaries in that it is entirely devoted to a single airfield, and that a remote stop on the London to India route, It was also unusual in that it provides unique footage of Sheikh Sultan II bin Saqr Al Qasimi, the Ruler of Sharjah in 1936, and of Sharjah Fort at the time. The fort itself was subsequently demolished and the footage taken for Air Outpost was used, together with other historical records and documents, in the 1997 reconstruction of the fort.
Imperial Airways was not only an important sponsor of documentary film making in the 1930s, but also presented an important revenue stream for Strand and other British film makers, to the point where it was considered a descendant of the Empire Marketing Board, and the leading commissioner of documentary films in Britain