TTFC Achievements Magazine

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toba www.trinidadand

ebruary 2010 January 2006 – F

Photos: Stephen Broadbridge

The TTFC is a single purpose company designed to develop the national film industry through the provision of service and support. The Company delivers high quality customer service to all stakeholders within the film/audio-visual industry and acts as a gateway between the film-makers and various communities. TTFC advocates for the implementation of mechanisms to enhance industry performance; Promotes T&T as a film location via a dedicated website and other media platforms; Supports a range of events and Administers grant and equity programmes that have produced award-winning films. TTFC is the one-stop shop for Film in T&T.

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Photo: Darisha Beresford

What’s inside Message from our Minister Chairman’s Message Pleased to meet you! The TTFC Board of Directors and Team

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Section 1: The indigenous industry

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The Production Assistance and Script Development Programme Producing films, creating jobs, local content Production Assistance and Script Development (PASD) Programme Successes Production Assistance and Script Development Programme Overview Local feature films (The Feature Film Programme) Animation

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Section 2: Attracting foreign and local productions

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Section 3: Training, teaching, internships

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Section 4: The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival

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Section 5: Leading Lights

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Section 6: Looking back

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Section 7: Going forward

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Film festivals and distribution

Leading Lights of the Trinidad & Tobago Film Industry How it all began If life is a red carpet premiere, what am i doing in pit?

Outlook Magazine Credits

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Photo: Patrice Matthews

The making of an industry Outreach

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Suite 015, Bretton Hall, 16 Victoria Avenue, Port of Spain, Trinidad Telephone: (868) 625-FILM (3456) Fax: (868) 624-2683 Website: www.trinidadandtobagofilm.com E-Mail: info@trinidadandtobagofilm.com

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Building blocks of a successful film industry

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Message from our minister

by The Honourable Mariano Browne Minister of Trade and Industry and Minister in the Ministry of Finance I wish to congratulate the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company (TTFC) on its work during its first three years of operations. This magazine focuses on the highlights of the Company’s achievements and will serve as a record for the information, guidance and instruction in the future growth of this area of national life.

As part of its effort to facilitate the transformation of the Trinidad and Tobago economy, the Government has identified the creative arts as an opportunity for business growth and development. It was with this in mind that the TTFC was formed to develop the film industry in Trinidad and Tobago. It was felt that this would lead to a win-win situation in the development of the cultural life of the country while creating other unique business opportunities in the creative arts.

As the magazine reveals, during the past three years, much work has

clearly been done by the Company in collaboration with stakeholders in the industry. It is clear that the foundations have been laid for sustainable growth in this sector of our economy. This entire effort has been facilitated by government policy in support of the industry.

The Government remains committed to the development of the national film industry. We will continue to provide the resources and other support for the work of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company. We feel assured that, as this publication reveals, it is a worthwhile investment in the country’s economic and cultural development.

Best wishes to the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company and all those involved in the advancement of the film industry in our country. Keep filming.

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Chairman’s MESSAGE The film industry is now an area of special focus, as part of the economic diversification under way in Trinidad and Tobago. It is the government’s vision that the film sector must enrich the cultural output of Trinidad and Tobago; help to increase the Gross Domestic Product; generate new wealth and employment; and contribute to the sustainable progress of this nation. For this purpose, the Cabinet established the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company Limited (TTFC) in January 2006. On the basis of an approved strategic plan, we have been working assiduously, for the past three years, towards the mandate set by the government.

We have employed two main strategies to achieve our objectives.

Firstly, we have been developing the local film industry. Outstanding products have already emerged, and many more are in the works.

Our nation and the entire Caribbean constitute a rich, unexplored source for the creation of new and exciting films. The TTFC considers it a special obligation to ensure the fullest possible development of this nation’s indigenous film industry.

The other aspect of our strategy is to promote Trinidad and Tobago as a premier location for the international film industry. We want global filmmakers to gravitate to our country, employing its culture, landscape and infrastructure to make movies for the international market.

Many films have already been shot here as a result of our efforts, and we continue to receive increasing interest in this location from the global filmmaking community.

The two strategies are of course interrelated. The use of Trinidad and Tobago as an international location means a transfer of technology, the growth of local expertise, and exposure to global standards and requirements, all of which will serve the development of the local sector.

Most importantly, it presents the very real possibility of international capital becoming genuinely interested in exploring the local historical and cultural experience and worldview through the medium of film. This would be a most critical development, and could also result in joint ventures between local and foreign investors in the industry.

Capital is critical. A thriving film industry is one of the quintessential private-sector activities; and without the fullest possible infusion of private finance, our local industry will not develop its fullest potential.

Therefore, while government support will always be necessary for developmental purposes, the film industry must eventually be able to stand on its own. Privatesector investment is critical for the attainment of this goal. As the global film industry continues to demonstrate, when capital and creativity come together, the magic of the film industry is manifested.

The TTFC has therefore given top priority to providing fiscal and other incentives. Competition is fierce in this industry, so we are always looking for new ways to facilitate filmmakers and to improve the industry environment still further.

We are proud of our achievements in three short years, which we highlight in this publication. We

Photo: Alice Besson

by Ralph Maraj

know that we have some distance to travel before we can claim to have a full, sustainable film industry in Trinidad and Tobago, but we are sure that over the last three years we have laid the foundations for the growth of this national enterprise.

Our industry is on the move.

I wish to thank sincerely all members of the Board of Directors, past and present, who have given so much of their time and talent in the development of our company and the pursuit of its goals. These are Mr Ian Collier, Mr Michael Toney, Ms Sonji Pierre Chase, Dr Andre Vincent Henry, Ms La Shaun Prescott, and our hardworking CEO, Ms Carla Foderingham, who, along with her staff, labour in daily pursuit of the company’s objectives. We are also especially grateful to the government, which, through the Ministry of Trade and Industry, has been the indispensable and principal agent of policy and resources for the development of the film industry in our country.

May the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company grow from strength to strength in the service of our nation.

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Pleased to meet you!

TTFC Board of Directors and Employees

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Sonji Pierre Chase, Ralph Maraj (Chairman), Carla Foderingham (CEO), Dr. Andre Vincent Henry.

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From left: Sonji Pierre Chase, Ralph Maraj (Chairman), La Shaun Prescott, Ian Collier, Carla Foderingham (CEO), Dr. Andre Vincent Henry. Not in picture: Michael Toney

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Front row from left: Sonji Pierre Chase, Ralph Maraj (Chairman), Carla Foderingham (CEO), Dr. Andre Vincent Henry.

Photos: Alice Besson

Back row from left: Ingrid Garcia (Receptionist), Isidora Ramkissoon (Facilitation Officer), Patrice Matthews (Marketing Manager), Rashmi Ramgosine (Executive Assistant to CEO), Antonio Maharajh (Accounts Clerk), Denise Geyette (Facilitation Manager), Marissa Burke (Administrative Officer), Vera Edwards (Office Support Assistant).

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Patrice Matthews

Stephen Broadbridge

Sharon Aleong

Patrice Matthews

Section 1

The Indigenous industry

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Renee Pollonais

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The Production Assistance and Script Development Programme 97 Projects : Producing films, creating jobs, local content

Ask Alex De Verteuil what made JAB, the award- Awards. Every one of the crowd-pleasing gems in the winning, heart-stopping documentary on the 2009 festival was produced through PASD. Among Paramin Blue Devils, possible and he will tell you, them: Coolie Pink and Green by Patricia Mohammed, without hesitation, it was the Production Assistance awarded People’s Choice Best Short Film; The Solitary and Script Development programme (PASD) Alchemist by Mariel Brown, awarded Best “The of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Locally Made Film Jury Award; The Ghost biggest hurdle to overcome in documentary filmCompany (TTFC). of Hing King Estate by Francis Escayg, making is sourcing the funding. There is awarded People’s Choice Best JAB is one of 97 locally produced any number of topics that call out for attention Feature Film; and Mas Man by from someone who makes documentary films, films, animations, feature films, but without the money, you are nowhere. With JAB, Dalton Narine, awarded People’s short films, documentaries and for example, we would never have been able to commit Choice Best Documentary. television series that can claim to the project unless we had been fortunate enough to the PASD as their champion be selected as one of the PASD programme recipients. and their path to international And beyond the funding, there was also the informed and valuable commentary on the film treatment. This was all How it all began success. the more welcome since it did not interfere with your

And the number keeps creative control, but offered constructive criticism that The PASD programme was growing. The programme has led you were free to choose or reject. Then there was additional support with submissions to film festivals born out of the strategic planning to the creation of employment for and so forth. As an encouragement to aspiring of the stakeholders, who knew over 600 people and drummed up filmmakers I think the PASD programme is the only way to meet the national a vital factor.” in excess of $6.3 million in privateobjective of helping to diversify the Alex De Verteuil, producer, sector support since its inception. economy through the development of a JAB The PASD has also been a success from an film industry was to provide screenwriters, artistic and popular point of view, too, judging from the filmmakers, producers and technical staff with the means Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival’s People’s Choice to lay the foundation for the local industry.

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Ryan Khan

PASD Jury and CEO work. It is not always as comprehensive as we would Even Caribbean countries, still tied to “We shot in like, given time constraints, but most of the time European countries with fully developed Tobago and just like that, these suggestions are welcomed.” film industries, long for such a system. our budget went through the Norman de Palm, from the Dutch roof—and I am not talking about anyThe PASD is respected by filmmakers territory of Curaçao, and one of thing extravagant. We did 13 episodes, and professionals alike for its transparency 15 and a half hours a day for nine weeks. the international members of the I am talking shooting at a pace, but man, and impartiality. The judges are film PASD’s jury panel, admits, super expensive! The location alone was experts from all over the Caribbean. going to set us back US$18,000 a night.

“There is no other programme Fortunately for us the TTFC came in at Among the scripts, feature films, dramas and documentaries it has generated so the end to help.” like this in the region which is far, the majority are by filmmakers who Danielle Dieffenthaller, producer,/ bringing in products to grow the writer/ director, The Reef, are relatively unknown and/or new talent in industry. This type of programme Westwood Park the field. Every year the number of newcomers should encourage other Caribbean islands increases, bringing to the table highly original to get on board.”

I material, from puppets being still cannot Nor is there another programme in which filmmakers kidnapped to tales of gangsters believe that the TTFC are moulded into better, more efficient writers, directors or folklore. The PASD did not scoff at our seemingly and producers. The PASD’s monitoring committee is selection process brings far-fetched dreams of filming a always there to guide a project to perfection—or as to the fore artists who story of a puppet being kidnapped. close to it as possible. Annabelle Alcazar, a member of are committed to their The thing is, the financial assistance is all well and good, but what really the committee, explains: “The monitoring committee craft and can produce makes so much of a difference is the grooming and support the TTFC does play a mentoring and advisory role to a degree, culturally significant provides. reviewing the projects as they progress and making projects that speak to a Roger Alexis, producer/direcsuggestions as to ways of completing and improving the wider audience, projects tor, Kidnapped: Herman’s Tales

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Producing Films

like Dalton Narine’s Mas Man and Jean-Michel Gibert’s Soca Power.

A variety of projects

The

staff of the TTFC In 2007, the TTFC was helpful, informative, and hosted a TV film festival whatever they couldn’t provide, they’d featuring work from the make an effort to put you in the right direcPASD programme, tion to get what you’re looking for. A government body that sponsors your unbridled artistic and audiences and idea and has no commercial agenda? It’s the best advertisers took no- thing a filmmaker can ask for. It played a major role tice of the fact that in helping my latest production, Minutes to MidNite, people love to watch become a reality by mainly funding it. It also allowed me to stay true to my artistic vision, thereby giving their stories told by me more confidence in my skills as a filmmaker. their countrymen. The It definitely has given me an optimistic outlook TTFC hopes to match on the future of filmmaking in Trinidad and Tobago. its success in 2010, with Ryan C Khan, writer/producer, the collaboration of local Minutes to MidNite broadcasters to bring another TV film festival to the public.

The scope of film and television genres that the PASD programme has supported includes everything from documentaries (The Solitary Alchemist by Mariel Brown), off-beat social-satire shorts (Herman’s Tales

by Roger Alexis), feature films (the Sista God trilogy

by Yao Ramesar), television series (The Reef and Westwood Park by Danielle Dieffenthaller, Real Talk

by Sheridan Edwards), educational films (Coolie Pink Beand Green by Patricia Mohammed, YES sides the financial

by Lorraine O’Connor), children’s The future looks bright for the programme, assistance I got from the TTFC, learning programming (Pete which is expected to produce 25 projects they have been a total inspiration for me, the Panstick by Simeon which gives me a lot of motivation also. The first in the coming year and to refine the screenplay that I wrote under the TTFC’s scriptSandiford), historical (The selection process to favour projects development programme, The Other Jerry, was challengAmerindians by Tracy ing for several reasons: I had to meet a deadline; the subject with wider audience appeal and Assing) and animation matter was based on an ongoing scourge that is afflicting our greater commercial viability.

(The Vegetarian Super country, so my primary objective was always to make the story It will also offer, together and motivational, with the hope that it would discourMachine by Camille educational with its existing mentoring age our young people from a life of crime; there was so much to Selvon-Abrahams). tell in that story that I ended up writing almost 200 pages, making it support, further assistance with much longer than the standard for a workable screenplay. So then I distribution and marketing, and The PASD has had to work extra hard at cutting down the number of pages, while copyright protection. succeeded in generating still maintaining the essence of the story. In the end, it became

employment as well as the best thing I have ever written, receiving critical acclaim from The dedicated team behind the the monitoring committee, as well as from American profostering the professional ducer PASD programme (Marina Salandy Rudy Langlais, who has also expressed interest in development of previously Brown, Annabelle Alcazar and producing it.

Selwyn Quamina, writer, Back From Hell, The unknown indigenous talent.

Bruce Paddington – PASD monitoring Other Jerry, Gangsta Brother, and carPASD projects have also committee) can feel proud of the growth toonist (Trinidad Express) spurred private-sector support of the local film and television industry as of the film industry through direct a whole, from training to increased international investment, sponsorship and brand awareness of local culture. The TTFC is encouraged “Making a advertising. This is expected by the fact that the work coming out of the PASD can documentary is a timeto increase in the coming please our highly critical local audiences—which can consuming process and as it years as the advertising only augur well for pleasing global audiences too. is, I had been working on it for a year and a half. And it’s expensive! industry becomes more You want to be able to live while doing it, directly tied to the “PASD and the PASD just made it possible. I just was very useentertainment industry, feel enormously lucky and very, very glad ful for seed funding and for to be doing what I am doing at this time, in an attempt to reach encouragement and feedback on when there is some sort of possibility of consumers who are not script. They serve a very valuable space help and government funding.” attracted by traditional for filmmakers. Winning the People’s Choice Mariel Brown, producer, The was an affirmation that it hit the note we wanted advertising. For instance, Solitary Alchemist to—it was a film meant to make people feel good Regal Products is reaping about themselves. This message was definitely more product awareness out of picked up by others: the Indian High Commissioner asked us to take the film to India for the Pravasi its brand presence on The Khurchursingh Family on Film Festival in January 2010, and we are Gayelle than if the company created a commercial and already in the Birmingham Film Festival in the bought airtime. Television is changing, and the PASD UK (30 – 31 October, 2009).”

Patricia Mohammed, producer, Coolie is poised to take advantage of it.

Pink and Green

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Hit for Six

• Six (6) International Film Festivals and screenings • One (1) Regional Film Festival • Theatrical release in Trinidad and Jamaica

Production Assistance and Script Development Programme (PASD) Successes JAB

• Eight (8) International Film Festivals and screenings • Three (3) Regional Film Festivals • One (1) Local Film Festival

Vegetarian Super Machine

• Two (2) International Film Festivals and screenings • Two (2) Regional Film Festivals • Two (2) Local Film Festivals

Westwood Park

• DVD Season One for sale on Amazon.com • Series shown on Television in Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean, New York, London and Nigeria.

Coolie Pink and Green

• Two (2) International Film Festivals • One (1) Local Film Festival

Sista God

• Three (3) International Film Festivals • One (1) Local Film Festival

Insatiable Season

• Two (2) International Film Festivals • One (1) Local Film Festival 11

PASD SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT 2004-2009

2004 – 5: Camille Granger Aisle 4, Afterlite (animation) Anthony Hall Till Death Do Us Part 2005 – 6: Alison Saunders-Franklyn Hit for Six Stephen Brown Maljo Selwyn Quamina The Other Jerry

Scripts

2006 – 7: Anthony Hall Jean & Dinah Janine Fung Jean Miles Story Dawn Cumberbatch Lex Talionis Mervyn de Goeas Pooja Fenwrick Francis Crowded Quarters Rubadiri Victor The 100 Greatest Moments in T&T History Francis Escayg Escape from Silk Cotton Forest (animation) 2007 – 8: Ryan Khan Minutes to MidNite (short) Mervyn de Goeas Mampie Irma Rambaran The Trial of Elma Francois Selwyn Quamina Spitfire Kirk Budhooram Final Appeal 2007 – 8 (Second call): Andre Johnson Legs Selwyn Quamina Touch Me, Willie Boy, Touch Me Christopher Din Chong Are We Dead Yet?

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2009 Sweet TNT Special Call: Ryan Khan A Midnite Affair Frances Escayg Radica Andre Johnson Sweet TNT DOCUMENTARIES 2005 – 6: Kris Rampersad Mas Culture 2006 – 7: Rubadiri Victor The 100 Greatest Moments in T&T History 2007 – 8: Naima Mohammed Islam in our Midst Adrena Ifill Birth of a Nation: Trinidad and Tobago Thru a Camera Lens Sharon Syriac La Divina Pastora/Sipari Mai Alfred Nitzinsky Selling Soca Stacey Lela Rapsology: The Science of Rapso 2007 – 8 (Second call): Samlal Gobin A Day in the Life Animation Camille Selvon-Abrahams Krik Krak

FEATURES 2004 – 5: Robert “Yao” Ramesar Sista God 2005 – 6: Francis Escayg The Ghost of Hing King Estate Maureen Pereira Schoolbreaker (short) 2006 – 7:

Jaime Lee Loy Bury Your Mother

Productions

FEATURES

2007 – 8 (Second call): Ryan Khan Minutes to MidNite (short) Robert “Yao” Ramesar Sista God II The Second Coming DOCUMENTARIES

2004 – 5: Desiree Sampson Stradivarius of Steel: The Ellie Mannette Story Neisha Agostini At Sea

2005 – 6: Alex De Verteuil JAB Amon Saba Saakana Roots in Tradition: Pearl Eintou Springer Oliver Roopsingh Carnival in Northeastern Trinidad Mariel Brown Insatiable Season Patricia Mohammed A Different Imagination Kwynn Johnson The Keeper Macron Communications Mas in D West Nicholas Emery Dancing Deities Nicola Cross Ecowatch 2 2006 – 7: Alex De Verteuil Buried Treasure Mariel Brown The Solitary

PASD PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE 2004-2009 Alchemist Gizelle Morris The Boys of Chacon Street 2007 – 8: Ricki Manmohan In Concert: Mungal Patasar & Pantar Emilie Upczak Y-Ning Jeffrey Chock Narrie Approo

2007 – 8 (Second call): Dalton Narine Peter Minshall: The Art of Mas Sarah Beckett Alabaster Moon Alfred Nitzinsky Selling Soca Patricia Mohammed Coolie Pink and Green John Barry Classical Steel Tracy Assing The Amerindians Sonja Dumas Julia and Joyce Veronica Guy-Stafford Heritage 2 TV SERIES 2004 – 5:

Lorraine O’Connor YES Rhou Francis Lau Prestige (pilot) 2005 – 6:

Desiree Sampson YTV—Youth TV Elspeth Duncan I Spy Fern Chase Limin 2006 – 7:

Kirk Budhooram Herman’s Tales Rodney Seemungal JJ & Friends Denith McNicoll Sauce TV 2007 – 8:

Errol Singh The Kurchursingh Family Diefferent Style Flims The Reef Rodney Seemungal JJ & Friends Hayden Louis Kyah Kyah 2007 – 8 (Second call): Sheridan Edwards Real Talk (DVD magazine) Roger Alexis Herman’s Tales Aleeyah Ali Discovering Redzi’s

World Angelique Borde The Island Adventurer Diefferent Style Flims The Reef Fenwrick Francis Crowded Quarters (promotional clip) Natacha Jones Slice of Life ANIMATION 2004 – 5:

Camille Selvon-Abrahams The Vegetarian Super Machine 2005 – 6: Revelino Guevara We to Blame (documentary) 2007 – 8: Dawn Pirtheesingh Dirty Clothes Camille Selvon-Abrahams Krik Krak Tales—The Anansi Chronicles 2007 – 8 (Second Call): Fenwick Frances Crowded Quarters Jason Hendrickson Visage: From Dust to Life Jeremy Berkeley Trini Adventure: Legend of Akousa, Son of Papa Bois Roger Jackson How the Turtle Cracked his Back and Other Stories OTHER 2005 – 6: Danielle Dieffenthaller Westwood Park (for distribution) 2006 – 7: Camille Parsons Inside T&T Carnival 2K7…The Spirit of Carnival (DVD disc production) 2007 – 8: Simeon Sandiford Pete the Panstick (interactive DVD)

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Photos Jason Gardner, courtesy Maturity Music

Rose, Calypso Diva

Local feature films More local content through the Feature Film Programme (FFP)

One of the critical schemes that the TTFC has introduced is its Feature Film Programme (FFP), set up in 2007. The programme is designed to increase the number of feature films originating from Trinidad and Tobago by providing equity funds for local filmmakers.

The TTFC understood that this programme was necessary to develop more local content for domestic consumption and to make it easier for local filmmakers to produce their own feature-length films, which could then be accessed from around the global marketplace.

The FFP is the first programme of its kind to be offered in the English-speaking Caribbean, and provides equity funding through 14

a comprehensive mechanism and support system.

Eighteen people responded to the first call for entries in 2007, and to date one of the approved projects, Rose, Calypso Diva, has begun production, and a second, Between Friends, is in pre-production.

She has plenty tempo

Rose, Calypso Diva is an 80-minute feature on the life of one of Trinidad and Tobago’s first female calypsonians, Calypso Rose.

The documentary will chronicle her life, from her humble beginnings in Tobago to her rise to glory as the Calypso Queen of the World.

The film is expected to be completed by September 2010, but already it has won excellent reviews—it was pitched to international broadcasters at the 2009 edition of Hot Docs, one of the best established documentary forums in the world. Rose was acclaimed by many of the distributors who attended, and HBO, the Sundance Channel, PBS, TVO, NHK, ARTE France and Channel 4 all expressed interest in it. Through France O, France Television explored the preacquisition of the documentary, and MK2, the largest French independent theatre network, inquired about screening the premiere in theatres once the project is complete. It is expected that the film will be picked up by several international distributors and screened in cinemas and at festivals around the world.

Its producer, Jean-Michel Gibert, was happy to be able to attend Hot

Docs, stating that it was a “highly valuable experience and a step forward to ensuring a higher quality and professionalism of our team of co-producers.”

The second project in the programme, Between Friends, is still awaiting additional privatesector support; however, the TTFC remains optimistic that the project will be completed in 2010. The producer, Omari Jackson, developed this script over many years, and the FFP has provided the opportunity for the idea to become a reality. The film will look at issues of youth and sexuality, in the form of a dramatic feature. Other films in gestation include Pooja by Mervyn de Goeas, and Jean & Dinah by Anthony Hall.

How the FFP works

The FFP provides an avenue for Trinidad and Tobago to celebrate the production of films shot entirely on location in this country and infused with its indigenous, unique creativity. The programme has its roots in the strategic plan created in 2005, which outlined the importance of producing local feature-length films to give a voice to local people and to counteract the overwhelming influence of foreign films that have flooded the region over many years.

Foreign film investors considering this country as a prospective film location also want to see that local filmmakers have approval and assistance from their own government.

As with its PASD (Production Assistance and Script Development) programme, the TTFC seeks to ensure there is transparency in the process of approving projects for the FFP. The programme is adjudicated by an international panel, using clear and impartial criteria developed by the TTFC. Their goal is to identify original concepts, as well as to help

filmmakers to be more efficient in their delivery. Funding for projects is disbursed on the basis of regular assessments of progress and the achievement of critical milestones.

In its entirety, the programme should work together with a proposed 150-per-cent tax concession that will encourage private-sector partners to sponsor local production and make up the shortfall in public-sector funding. The current lack of a tax concession has stymied the progress of the FFP; however, optimism remains high that it will come into effect early in 2010.

Sell us a short!

Thinking out of the box, and ever mindful of making the best possible use of its financial resources, the TTFC issued a special call in September 2009 for producers to submit proposals for a short drama.

This call was special in that it was the first time that the TTFC had tried to facilitate the production of a feature film by fusing three independently created elements. The component parts share the theme “Sweet T&T,” the common thread that will link them into a feature-length film.

The jury:

• Catherine Hughes, independent producer from Guyana

• Bruce Paddington, UWI lecturer, BA Film • Annabelle Alcazar, producer

M usic

V ideo

Lisa Wickham

Q. What effect has the music video had on the cultural capital of T&T? A. Music videos have had both a positive and negative effect on the cultural capital of Trinidad and Tobago.

The better produced videos have captured and preserved indigenous stories, artform and landmarks and translated them into internationally accepted images that present our artistes as professionals who are from the Caribbean, more specifically Trinidad and Tobago, who can take their place next to any internationally produced music video. The construct of cultural capital implies some level of investment. Music videos now form part of a professional artiste’s electronic promotional kit, a tool if effectively used can create future employment from anywhere in the globe.

Q. How much money does it take to produce a high-quality music video? And how can we make them work for us?

A. US$10,000 minimum and you will have to double that if there are extras, multiple locations, effects, etc. If we use soca artiste Shurwayne Winchester as a case study, we see where through a systematic and well thought-out series of music videos, the artiste’s image was built, shaped and transformed, with the videos also being used to enhance onstage presentation. In the digital era, the music video can penetrate markets even before the artiste ever steps foot there.

As a country, the quality of music videos also speaks to the quality of film production that exists. In a market where few homegrown films exist, international producers usually look at the quality of music video production and make a judgement as to the quality of film production overall.

• Camille Selvon-Abrahams, director of the Animae Caribe Festival

Hughes praised the programme, saying: “Great to see such a programme exists in the Caribbean.

This is how we develop the future filmmakers.”

After carefully considering the 13 scripts submitted, the jury chose those of Ryan Khan, Andre Johnson and Francis Escayg.

Andre Johnson

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Local Feature Films

Delighted by the concept and the opportunity, Johnson had this to say about the project: “The special short-call, for which I am privileged to be one of the awardees, is a very insightful approach to filmmaking.

Being one of the producers of three 30-minute movies to be packaged as a full-length feature film affords me the opportunity to collaborate with two other gifted filmmakers. The very nature of this project fosters an atmosphere of collaboration that is absolutely essential to a fledgling film industry in Trinidad and Tobago.

“I am already growing with the challenges that this approach brings...whereby you have three excellent 30-minute productions that are related by the theme of ‘Sweet T&T.’ Invigorated by this opportunity, I have already secured my resources.”

Asked about the TTFC’s development programme, project monitor Annabelle Alcazar commented, “I think it serves a very necessary role in the process of moving the film industry and its stakeholders forward, providing

opportunities they otherwise have.”

would

not

Francis Escayg

Sweet T&T is due to be completed in time to be premiered at the 2010 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.

In the future, the TTFC, the FFP jury panel and the monitoring committee hope to make possible the production of three features every year. As well as funding feature-film development, the TTFC will also assist producers with marketing, obtaining distribution for their projects, and getting the films screened at notable festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, the Black Film Makers Festival and the Caribbean Tales Film Festival.

Creative wealth = GDP wealth

One of the many strengths of the FFP is that it contributes to the professional development of individual filmmakers.

The creative industries in general and the film industry in particular have potential in which the government must invest. According

Members of the jury for the 2009 Special Call for Short Dramas

to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), “Globally, the creative industries are estimated to account for more than seven per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product and are forecast to grow at a rate of 10 per cent yearly.”

How does the TTFC tap into this wealth? How does T&T join the growing list of film-ready countries which attract billions of dollars in capital investment from the private sector, revenues from large movie studios and returns in tourism and employment?

One of the ways is through the FFP. A comprehensive package of concessions, coupled with privatesector incentives, is just one of the key elements in the creation of a local filmmaking culture.

The FFP is not just helping to develop an industry; it is developing a culture, a national identity, and a future economic resource for when oil and natural gas run out.

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Local Feature Films

A truly holistic approach is being taken towards the development of the industry to ensure that it will be supported with the necessary infrastructure, trained and skilled personnel, and a direction for its future development provided by the TTFC. The TTFC also has as one of its goals the education of the public about its cultural and national identity—and the preservation of that identity. Filmmaking is the historical documentation of the 21st century, and a country without a film industry is a country whose history, culture, people and identity may be erased within the next 50 years, or even sooner, when newspapers are compost, historical books have decayed and everything is virtual and digital.

The stellar international performance of locally produced features answers the million-dollar question: do international audiences really want to see films based in Trinidad and Tobago, or films telling stories of the people, culture and history of Trinidad and Tobago?

Carla Foderingham, CEO of the TTFC, says without hesitation: “I feel that the world is hungry for stories to be told from a new perspective. We are a diverse, multiethnic and cosmopolitan country, and can begin to contribute to the global arena of films by telling stories from a Caribbean perspective.”

Soon in a theatre near you

It was no surprise that the review committee recommended Pooja to the FFP. Written by Mervyn de Goeas, a four-time winner of the National Drama Association’s Cacique Award for Best Director, it’s an original, part-fantasy, partmusical, part-feminist drama set in 18

Jean Michel Gibert

1960s Trinidad. It tells the story of a young Indian wife who escapes the prison of her abusive marriage through Bollywood musicals. It should be in production and ready to premiere soon.

“Not many people are like me, who say, ‘Here is where I from and these are the stories I want to tell!’

Many start this race. Most fall out.

It takes a lot of gumption to actually stay in this business,” said Mervyn de Goeas, director, actor, writer and producer of Pooja.

Enter the undaunted Omari Jackson, a globe-trotting film director and scriptwriter. His film Between Friends is an engaging mixture of snappy dialogue and sexual relationships, delivered in a style that never shies away from the edge. He describes the film, now in pre-production, as “a reflection of what really goes on in heterosexual relationships.” The FFP is helping Jackson realise his dream of producing a film that is progressive and controversial. We can’t wait to see it!

“The TTFC is one of my main investors during this process, and the push of their investment basically facilitates others to come on board,” said Omari Jackson, writer/producer, Between Friends.

Nobel laureate Derek Walcott called it “one of the finest pieces of West Indian theatre I have seen in years.” So there was only one way to take Jean & Dinah, Anthony Hall’s award-winning play, up a notch—by turning it into a feature film. Veteran actresses Penelope and Rhoma Spencer are expected to breathe just as much vivid life into this story on camera as they did on stage. Hall reiterates, “We are all gutter people at heart.”

Hall is no stranger to the camera, having worked alongside television luminaries like Christopher Laird on the Gayelle programme and television station. His combination of production expertise and theatrical pedigree will no doubt make Jean & Dinah, the film, explosive. Advance tickets, please!

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Animation With backing from the TTFC, the Animae Caribe Animation and New Media Festival has ignited the imaginations of children across the country, inspired young artists, and even led the advertising industry to reel out a cast of colourful animated characters. Animae Caribe was founded eight years ago by Camille Selvon-Abrahams, one of the driving forces behind animation in Trinidad and Tobago.

The festival has screened animated films from India, Brazil, Slovakia, the Netherlands and the Caribbean, and hosted workshops with animators from The Simpsons Movie, Sesame Street and Disney Studios, and Olun Riley, this country’s most famous and experienced animator.

TTFC beneficiaries

Apart from sponsoring Animae Caribe, the TTFC has helped SelvonAbrahams—and other animatedfilmmakers—in other ways too.

Her 2007 short film, The Vegetarian Super Machine, was one of nine animated films funded by the TTFC through its Production Assistance and Script Development programme (PASD) over the last four years.

Based on a poem by the 13th-century poet Jalaladin Rumi, The Vegetarian Super Machine is a divine journey through the Caribbean forest in search of treasure that turns out to 20

be unattainable. It was shown at the Birds Eye View Film Festival in London in March last year.

Also receiving funding through the PASD were: Camille Granger (Aisle 4, Afterlite); Francis Escayg’s Escape from Silk Cotton Forest; Roger Alexis, Kenwyn Francis and Kirk Budhooram’s Herman’s Tales series; Revelino Guevara We to Blame; Selvon-Abrahams’ Krik Krak Tales—The Anansi Chronicles; and Dawn Pirtheesingh’s Dirty Clothes.

A second call in 2007–8 saw Jason Hendrickson receiving funding for Visage: From Dust to Life; Jeremy Berkeley for Trini Adventure: Legend of Akousa, Son of Papa Bois; and Roger Allan Jackson for How the Turtle Cracked His Back and Other Stories.

Just looking at the titles, you can see a pattern emerging: a desire to tell our stories in a way that the rest of the world can understand and appreciate.

We LOVE Herman

Herman’s Tales is hilarious and oh so Trini—with dialect, bacchanal, and enough twists and turns to turn one episode into an epic.

Thanks to the TTFC, Herman has developed from a home-made movie that Roger Alexis showed to his friends into a full-scale television series, now in its second season, and has been featured four times at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (TTFF).

Animation in advertising

The winning appeal of animation is also apparent in the local advertising industry, which has lately dreamed up a cast of colourful animated

animation

multi - media

www.fullcircleanimation.com

868.663.7126

interactive dvd

training

info@fullcircleanimation.com 21

Animation

characters, selling everything from Lucozade to text messages.

Christopher Guinness, a Trinidadian animator and art director with 41 local and international awards to his credit, can attest to this. He has won the American Advertising Federation’s US National Gold Addy Award in the category of Animation, making him the first and only Caribbean national to date to win at the final stage of the Addy Awards. Asked for his thoughts on the future of animation in advertising, he said, “Advertising tends to reflect what is popular.

This generation of consumers has grown up on video games, Saturday morning cartoons and big summer blockbuster movies. Advertisers and clients know this and they’re structuring their strategic approach to what appeals to the consumer.”

As for viewers, anyone who has a child, or is still a child at heart, animation films and series are pure, unadulterated escapism. You can forget about the mortgage and the office as you swim across the oceans with Nemo; run around fine restaurants with Ratatouille; go Up, up and away in a house hoisted by thousands of pastel balloons; watch pizzas and ice cream raining from the sky in Cloudy…with a Chance of Meatballs. And on television there’s Dora traipsing across China, and SpongeBob making crabby patties—and mischief—under the sea.

The world just can’t get enough of cartoons. With billions of children and teenagers—including ours— globally wired up to their TV screens, video games, the Internet and cell phones, the animation industry is booming.

T h e w o m a n w h o b l o g s t h e m a ll Georgia Popplewell is a writer, editor and media producer. The host/producer of Caribbean Free Radio, the Caribbean’s first podcast, she is also managing director of Global Voices, a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who work together to bring readers translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.

Q. You’re a pioneer in the new media field - tell us what the frontier with video/ film on the Internet looks like from a T&T point of view.

The interesting thing about the Internet is that while allowing people to distribute and promote their work more easily, it’s also made the competition much fiercer. The playing field’s now more level, but it’s more crowded with the many others also taking advantage of this wonderful new medium.

The liberalisation of the T&T telecoms market has resulted in better connectivity and lower bandwidth costs, so at least those who have access to an Internet connection are now able to put their work online without too much difficulty. It’s important to note, however, that the Internet won’t help people make better films, though it may encourage them to make different kinds of work—

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different formats and styles of films, more often than not non-commercial, suited for viewing online. I’m very heartened to see some of that kind of activity taking place here, and I look forward to seeing more.

Q. Global Voices Online is an amazing project. How has it influenced your thinking about reporting and the media?

Global Voices was formed in response to a problem that we in Trinidad and Tobago are certainly aware of: that the international media doesn’t have much time for what goes on outside the major metropolitan centres. But even within the borders of a small, relatively off-the-radar country like ours there are omissions in media coverage, as it’s just not possible for mainstream media—newspapers, television, radio—to report on everything that’s of relevance to everybody in a given community. Those who rail against citizen media speak of journalism as though it’s a monolith, instead of asking the fundamental question: what information do people need in order to be good citizens? While I don’t think citizen media can provide all of that information, or replace the work of journalists, I do think it has a role to play in providing some of the information, in amplifying what’s relevant to a community and in stimulating debate around matters of importance.

But except for cameos, like the Rasta jellyfish in Shark Tale and other minor roles, the Caribbean has found itself trailing in the wake of this animated tidal wave.

But it’s Selvon-Abrahams’ dream that we will have our own unmistakable aesthetic: “You could look at it and know it’s from the Caribbean,” she said. Her own fairytale adventure is to make Trinidad and Tobago part of the billion-dollar global animation industry.

Her idea for spreading the word about animation began with the Animae Caribe festival: through workshops with well-known animators; appearances by Joan Vogelesang, CEO of the leading animation software company Toon Boom Animation of Canada, to tout N ew

M edia

Q. How can we harness the power of new media to the benefit of T&T citizens?

As with any other tool, the people who benefit most from new media and the Internet are those who know how to use it well. Assuming that the main benefits to be derived from the Internet and new media by a society like ours are access to information and access to channels for distribution and promotion, then these are the two areas where we need to be developing expertise.

This involves developing media literacy: learning how to evaluate information and also learning how to evaluate and deploy tools and services in order to reach the audiences we’re targeting. People seeking to promote their work online should know, for instance, that the “walled garden” of Facebook isn’t the only place they should be putting their work.

Traditional media is still thriving in Trinidad and Tobago, however, and we’re still some distance from the stage where the Internet will be a primary source of information or entertainment for the mass of citizens. For connecting across borders, however, with the wider Caribbean and certainly with diaspora communities, I think the Internet and new media have a critical role to play.

T&T's #1 Mobile Network

www.animaecaribe.com 23

Animation

Still from Camille Selvon-Abraham’s The Anansi Chronicles

the commercial possibilities of the industry; screenings; awards, chalkart contests and exhibitions; and a “Moving Caravan” of animation films that travelled to rural communities.

“Vendor Rivalry” – award winning animated short film by Ansar Sattar

And then along came a little spider

The Anansi Chronicles is based on the legendary folk-hero spider of West Africa, whose tales of trickery survived the Middle Passage and centuries of slavery to remain one of the enduring mythological figures in the Caribbean. Passed on by oral tradition down the generations, Anansi’s influence on children in both regions is immeasurable.

This is why Selvon-Abrahams chose him as the star of her ambitious project, a 13-episode animated series for television, again with assistance from the TTFC. Dubbed The Anansi Mission: A World Project, it will bring together animators from across the Caribbean, the Diaspora and Africa—including some from Ghana, the UK, Belize and Jamaica—to weave together a tale with a distinct Afro-Caribbean flavour.

And, although it didn’t happen with a snap of the fingers and a twirl through time, the idea that this country could really be the birthplace of Caribbean animation, encouraged by the TTFC, has really begun to grow.

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Still from Roger Allan Jackson’s “How the Turtle Cracked his Back”

“One Night In Piarco” – award winning animated short film by Ansar Sattar

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Section 2

courtesy Charles kong Soo

ATTRACTING LOCAL & FOREIGN PRODUCTIONS

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Building blocks of a successful film industry The TTFC’s Mandate: Creating an enabling environment

to developing the industry in order to keep pace with changes internationally and to give the country a competitive advantage over other film locations in the region and the rest of the world. So the TTFC focused on putting in place a range of incentives to provide muchneeded support to local filmmakers and the international film community.

In seeking Cabinet’s support for the film incentives, the TTFC made them Fast-forward 50-plus years to 2009 available to both the national and and the scenario has changed. Studio international film communities. executives worldwide now search for The vision is for more international international production incentives before selecting the location for productions to be filmed on location in Trinidad and Tobago, and to build the their script. capacity of the local film community In the past four years, four interto meet the international crews’ needs national feature-length productions for assistance with production, while chose Trinidad and Tobago, thanks ensuring a transfer of technology to the TTFC’s introduction of incenoccurs. Thanks to the TTFC’s incentives tives. This is a significant achieveand other programmes, local people are ment for the country, since the indusalready benefitting from employment, try standard in most locations is one training and investment opportunities. feature-length film every three years.

The choice of Trinidad and Tobago was based primarily on the availLocal benefits ability of the incentives offered by Certified production companies the TTFC. From 2006 to 2010, 162 within Trinidad and Tobago benefitted crews visited Trinidad and Tobago immediately from Cabinet approval of and spent $13,496,702.48 (TT) on a one incentive: the removal of all taxes range of services such as accommoand duties on blank DVDs, videotapes dation, transportation, catering, hire and raw film stock. Filmmakers who of cast and crew and other services produce and master DVDs here, then from local providers. have copies manufactured overseas, When the TTFC opened its doors enjoy an exemption from Customs in 2006, the company understood it duties and taxes when they’re reneeded to take a fast-track approach imported into this country.

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Background photos Stephen Broadbridge

When Hollywood turned the spotlight on Trinidad and Tobago in the 1950s, it was the scripts of films such as Fire Down Below and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison that encouraged directors John Huston and Robert Parrish to choose Tobago’s beautiful landscapes as the backdrop for those productions.

Between 2006 and 2010, 162 crews have filmed on location in Trinidad and Tobago, injecting $13.5 million into the T&T economy.

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www. For the paperwork

The TTFC has created a onestop shop where all information on permits, licences and visas can be accessed online at www. trinidadandtobagofilm.com.

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Administrative support

The TTFC also offers administrative assistance with work permits and Customs, and has committed itself to provide skilled, efficient staff to support productions.

These efforts have borne visible fruit. Many production companies have acknowledged the tremendous support that the TTFC provided in co-ordinating travel arrangements, networking, work permits, Customs clearance, and dealing with state agencies and communities for their film projects.

Darisha Beresford

Patrice Matthews Petter Borgli

Since this incentive was introduced in 2007, the three international productions which have received rebates spent a total of $2.4 million on a range of local goods and services, including hiring over 100 local crew members, renting equipment, accommodation, transportation, catering, and other support services.

Patrice Matthews

TTFC Familiarisation Tour takes participants to the Temple in the Sea

In a parallel move, the TTFC introduced a production expenditure rebate. This incentive offered cash rebates of 12.5–30 per cent of the budget that international productions spent while filming on location in Trinidad and Tobago. International producers welcomed this move, and to date three productions have qualified and received their rebate cheques—Contract Killers, Soca Power, and Happy Sad. The Norwegian producers of Limbo have already applied for their rebate, which will be processed when the production wraps in November 2009.

The online system facilitates a quick turnaround on requests for information, in an industry where time is money and where requests can come from anywhere around the globe. TTFC personnel can now forge immediate links with international producers.

This improves response time and gives the TTFC the advantage of being able to process queries even before film crew members arrive in Trinidad and Tobago.

Michelle Latham

Building blocks

“The staff of the Film Company were absolutely unbelievable in terms of support they gave us during our preliminary research into the possibility of filming The Caribbean’s Next Top Model,” said Barbara Barde, of the Canadian company Up Front Entertainment.

“We would never have accomplished what we did in such a short time period without them.”

Emily Winks, a BBC producer, was clearly impressed when she endorsed the “excellent service from

Other important incentives in the pipeline will come onstream in early 2010. The corporate sector’s involvement will be emphasized, and another tax break will encourage public/private-sector partnerships: the TTFC is working with the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Division of Culture to reinstitute the 150-per-cent tax reduction for corporate sponsors, who will be encouraged to invest up to $1 million in film and television products.

Marketing Film markets, expositions and festivals: To spread the word about the incentives and benefits associated with filming in Trinidad and Tobago to the international film community, the TTFC launched a number of initiatives to educate prospective producers about what the country has to offer. This included taking part in events like the American Film Market, the AFCI’s Locations Expo and annual industry trade shows held in Los Angeles that target independent and large production companies and location scouts. In 2008, the TTFC had a booth at the American Film Market to promote the location, and it was through this exposure that the US-based Jowahara Films, producers of the film Jungle Warriors, became interested in scouting Trinidad and Tobago for a potential start of filming in 2010.

The TTFC online: One of the TTFC’s key marketing tools is its comprehensive website, which disseminates information to both the TTFC’s offshore and local markets.

Highly valued by international producers and scouts seeking information about the location, the site is a one-stop shop for finding photographs depicting many aspects of the country’s beauty and diversity. But it also provides forms, criteria, and guidelines for shooting on location, as well as featuring the TTFC’s new Production Directory, which provides a single point of reference to identify and locate film industry personnel for incoming crews. The guide is also accessible via the TTFC’s website, and CD versions are available at the TTFC’s office.

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO TRINI TRINID PRODUCTION DIRECTORY

Alex Smailes, on set of Soca Power, photo courtesy Maturity Music

Incentives for local filmmakers

www.trinidadandtobagolm.com

T R I N I DA D & TO B AG O F I L M CO M PA N Y Stephen Broadbridge

Julieta Pineda of the Canadian Hellin Marketing Group, which shot a Scotiabank promotion here, said: “Our decision to shoot here is based on the professionalism of local staff to handle our production needs, and the high quality of the service.”

Advertising: The TTFC also advertises in leading industry publications like the Creative Handbook, Locations Guide and KEMPS, which list the incentives available at film locations all over the world. The company is a member of the Association of Film Commissioners International, a source of critical film-industry training, networking and referrals for film commissions like the TTFC.

YES courtesy Lorraine O’Connor

the TTFC when planning the shoot for my crew. And all contact with the TTFC was via e-mail.”

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The TTFC has received tremendous support from Trinidad and Tobago missions abroad.

Embassies and high commissions have partnered with the company to promote the country as a destination and to give much needed exposure to locally produced content through screenings and representation at international film festivals.

Representatives of the High Commission in London recently collaborated in screening local films in Hamburg, Germany, and sponsored a Caribbean Corner at the Portobello Film Festival and a Caribbean Tales segment at the Black Film Makers International Film Festival, both held in London last year. A visit to India organised by the Ministry of Trade

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The TTFC views the Caribbean diaspora as a potential strategic platform and partner in popularising local film products, which will make it possible for them to reach wider international markets. In 2007– 2008, the TTFC co-ordinated visits to overseas missions, particularly in the Diaspora markets in New York, Toronto, Miami, Washington and London. In 2010, we plan to stage local film festivals in specifically chosen Diaspora locations in North America and Europe.

The TTFC’s heightened and targeted efforts at attracting international productions continue to bear fruit. Over the past three years, the country also attracted strong interest from the producers of Blood Diamonds and Pirates of the Caribbean. Several other smaller but high-profile commercial and TV producers, including Getty Images, Rhodes Across the Caribbean, and the BBC’s Natural History Unit, have been introduced to Trinidad and Tobago and plan to return. Three new international film projects are expected to start pre-production in 2010.

It’s no wonder that over the past three years the TTFC has helped 97 overseas producers in shooting everything from advertisements to feature films.

Stephen Broadbridge

The T&T and Caribbean Diaspora

Skene Howie

International agents and T&T foreign missions: To strengthen its marketing effort and presence abroad, the TTFC has in the past hired international agents to represent its interests in North America and Europe. Among other benefits, this resulted in the company’s hosting its first familiarisation trip for US location scouts Michelle Latham and John Hutchinson, whose consequent love affair with Trinidad and Tobago keeps them recommending the country to production companies to this day. Similarly, Stick N Stones Productions of the US scouted Trinidad in April 2009 for their film project Babylon, which is expected to start production in 2010.

and Industry and the Trinidad and Tobago High Commission resulted in the feature film Dulha Mil Gaya being shot on location here in 2007, contributing over $3 million to the local economy.

Sharon Aleong

Gudny Hummelvoll, director of the feature film Limbo, who shot on location here in November 2009, acknowledges, “We found our (Trinidadian) location management company, Galt Alliance…through the TTFC website.”

Stephen Broadbridge

Building blocks

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Section 3

Training, Teaching, Internships

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Photo: Patrice Matthews

The making of an industry

T&T’s holistic approach to training and education in film-related professions Training, teaching, internships

The TTFC’s strategic plan constitutes a holistic approach to building a film industry, which includes creating improved production capacity and expertise through training.

The implementation of the BA Film Degree at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the Diploma in Animation at the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) are critical milestones that have been achieved towards this end.

Supporting the effort are the Ministry of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education’s (MSTTE) Retraining Unit and a host of other large and small private and public training institutions.

The TTFC is also courting agencies like the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts (COSTAATT) to add specific and relevant short training programmes 36

in film to their curriculum, to ensure that there is continuous learning and development.

Since 2006, the TTFC has given $250,000 to the BA Film degree at UWI, through annual bursaries and by sponsoring an annual Best Student award. In this way the TTFC is investing in the creation of a pool of local professionals by offering them educational opportunities, and by providing a showcase for their work in the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (TTFF).

Teaching

In 2009, over 250 secondary school students were taught about the fundamentals of film production, and an estimated 300 film practitioners got to attend workshops, panels and discussions led by industry experts that covered distribution, cinematography, alternative marketing in the digital era, and co-productions.

The TTFC sponsored a schools day, at the O’Meara campus of UTT, for 700 secondary and tertiary-level students. They took part in workshops on stop-motion animation by the creators of the award-winning and groundbreaking Wapos Bay: The Series, which is based on the adventures of a family who live on a reservation in Canada; puppeteers from Sesame Street; and the art of traditional animation by Axel Rodriguez, from Cuba.

The MSTTE’s Retraining Unit’s courses in television production, advanced camera operations, and editing are excellent starting points.

Michael Mooleedhar, a MovieTowne usher turned filmmaker, got his feet wet at the Retraining Unit, then went on to study film at UWI. Fastforward a few years: this same usher is sitting down in MovieTowne to watch his own film, Queens of Curepe. In 2009, Mooleedhar edited Coolie Pink and Green, a visually lustrous film about a young East

Indian girl’s coming of age that was the People’s Choice for Best Short Film at the 2009 Film Festival.

Partly funded by the TTFC, Coolie Pink and Green was produced by Professor Patricia Mohammed. It’s one of a series of films she has made to teach students about complex phenomena such as ethnicity, visual aesthetics, and identity.

Animation

For those with a passion for animation, there’s a diploma in animation at UTT. The programme, introduced in September 2008, runs for two years and teaches the foundation tools of animation. Some interns also spend time learning about animation with the Full Circle Production studio.

From September 2010, UTT will also be offering a diploma in music and entertainment technology.

The BA in Film Studies at UWI is the most intensive and theoretical of all the programmes available. Bruce Paddington, the co-ordinator, says the idea is to produce a skills base of people who are not only technically sound, but have a knowledge of why and how films are made.

“So they would be aware of the great masters, the Hitchcocks and Bergmans, the history of film,” said Paddington. “They will understand the work of great filmmakers, but they will also have the skills of camera work, lighting, directing, editing, so that they can produce work of a high technical quality. And there are courses in marketing and distribution, which will be critical so they know how to go about getting their films shown.”

Fellow lecturer Christopher Meir, who has a PhD in Film Studies, and is trained as an historian, pointed out, “All of our introductory courses include at least one film from Bollywood and two films from Africa.”

A course at UWI is dedicated to Indian cinema, and this year the Indian High Commission will sponsor a chair in the subject. With half the population being of East Indian origin, this is an important move, one that promises to influence future local filmmakers’ sense and sensibilities.

Practical experience

Through the TTFC, 37 interns have worked on films shot on location in Trinidad and Tobago, gaining experience in sound, lighting and camera work on feature films such as The Mystic Masseur, Joebell and America, Contract Killers, Branded, and most recently the Norwegian film Limbo. Intern-turned-filmmaker Andre Johnson has now brought to the table his experience of working on the set of Sex and the City, for Warner Brothers and HBO—in just the kind of cross-fertilisation of ideas and skills that the local film industry needs.

“Hopefully there will be a corps of people who can work on feature films shot on location here,” said Bruce Paddington of UWI. “Recently [Jamaican director] Ras Kassa shot a film called Tribes about HIV (for MTV), and two or three of our students worked on it.”

The TTFC also sponsors the annual film festival so that there’s a platform on which up-and-coming filmmakers can show their work alongside masters of the artform.

The company can be satisfied that the festival has proved to be a successful launching-pad for promising new filmmakers.

“If you look at the relationship between the TTFF and the BA in Film programme,” says Paddington, “you’ll see that over the years, student films have done very well.

In 2007, Directions by Renee Pollonais won the People’s Choice

They say

Education

Mandissa Pantin is in her second year of the UWI BA in Film Q: Why did you decide to do the film degree?

About four years ago I got interested in the video field. I wanted to be a camera operator because I felt that we in the Caribbean need to express ourselves in documentaries, films, videos and see ourselves on TV and in films. So I joined the film programme to learn to do it properly.

Q: And has the degree taught you anything?

A: Before, when I watched films for the entertainment value, but now, understanding the history of film and the influences that earlier films had on new ones, I can see there’s a lot more meaning in movies. It’s not just learning the technical way to do shots, but what goes into every scene. I’ve also learned that there are certain things only I can do, coming from the Caribbean.

Q: So do you feel now that you have what it takes to be a camera operator?

A: Well, I’m expanding my vision. At the end of it all, I want to be a movie-maker, to operate the camera, direct, write or work with a team, directing. We don’t have a film industry in Trinidad, in fact, we don’t have a Caribbean film industry.

The kind of work we will have to put in to make it a reality, instead of making a film every once in a while, and that’s another aspect that the programme that has helped me understanding distribution and marketing, that sort of thing.

Frances-Anne Solomon is a visiting lecturer in film at the University of the West Indies. Trained as a director in England, she worked with the BBC and is now based in Canada, where she makes feature films and television series. She is also the founder and curator of Toronto’s Caribbean Tales Annual Film Festival, now entering its fifth year.

Q: What do you think about the establishment of the TTFC, the TTFF and the BA Film programme at UWI? A: It is all fantastic…I have spent most of my career ‘in exile,’ having to work outside the region...Being able to make films, teach and be involved with filmmakers in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean is very, very satisfying. I want to do more.

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Dov Siemens

Jimmel Daniel The Making of ...

award, while The Siege won Best Documentary. Last year The Power of the Vagina was given special mention in the Best Locally Made Film category.” The Power of the Vagina was also nominated for Best Documentary at the Portobello Film Festival in London.

Big guns

In addition to collaborating with tertiary education institutes, the TTFC itself brings in the big guns on occasion for workshops and seminars. Leveraging on connections it has made in the international film community, the TTFC has hosted affordable and relevant training programmes for aspiring filmmakers.

Dov Simens, one of Hollywood’s leading experts on producing, writing and directing feature films, ran a two-day TTFC workshop for film students and professionals in 2009. Credited with launching the film careers of Queen Latifah, 38

Quentin Tarantino, Will Smith and Guy Ritchie, Simens has lectured at some of the top film schools in the US, such as New York University.

Simens is clear about the most important aspect of the process: “First comes the script, then comes the money. And there are only two kinds of scripts: good scripts and bad scripts. Good scripts get backing, bad scripts get tossed out.”

In 2007, award-winning filmmaker Donahue Tuitt led a two-day TTFC workshop on scriptwriting and pitch sessions. He explained its purpose: “If you have a story idea and want a director or producer to invest time and money in making it into a movie, they are expecting it to look and read in a particular structure or format. I wanted the attendees to learn what that format is.”

Another dimension of the growing local industry is the input of veterans who have studied and worked abroad, then pass on their experience to upcoming enthusiasts,

such as Michael Cherrie, Lisa Wickham, and Nadella and Jason Riley. Cherrie, who played the lead in the British television film The Final Passage, trains would-be film actors.

Wickham, a producer and director and a graduate of the London Film Academy, has made a name for her company, E-Zone Entertainment, by showcasing Caribbean music and culture through music videos and TV productions, such as Bon Mange, a cooking show. E-Zone Entertainment also offers training in presenting and producing.

The Rileys are the husband-andwife team behind Caribbean Media Arts, who train the participants in the Secondary School Short Film Competition. They also provide training in media production, using facilitators from around the region, the US and the UK. Their courses cover the full range: camera and lighting, editing, music and film production, after-effects, graphics and animation, scriptwriting, presenting, and journalism.

“The films shown at the TTFC Outreach Programme were about drugs, HIV, violence, gangs and the pressures associated with low-income families.”

Rashmi Ramgosine

Ingrid Garcia

“I like the fact that the films had a positive message for the youth, such as, ‘Do not give up on your dreams, no matter what conditions you face.’”

Outreach

TTFC visits the Easy Learning Centre

Bringing the magic of film to children all over the islands

One initiative of which the TTFC is particularly proud is its Outreach Programme.

So far it has taken the programme to over 1,200 young people, from 49 different schools and communities, teaching them about the local film industry, informing them about career opportunities, and sharing the work and talent of local filmmakers.

Additionally, recognising the power of film and television to educate and to convey encouraging messages, the TTFC is using the film-screening segment of the Outreach Programme to have a

positive influence on young people.

Working with the pros The leaders whom the TTFC recruits for its hands-on outreach sessions are practitioners who aim to inspire creativity and give the students a rich and enjoyable learning experience. Favourites with the students include animator Roger Alan Jackson, who gets them involved while they learn about stopmotion animation techniques, and Na-

Diego Martin North Secondary visits the TTFC

della Riley, who reveals tricks of the trade that can be used as alternatives to costly special effects. Francis Escayg creates intrigue during his sessions by going through the motions of producing a film, assigning participants the roles of director, producer, cameraman and actors to show them the process involved. During many sessions, laughter and screams of delight can be heard from the room and the children leave reluctantly, because they want more.

The facilitators find the sessions rewarding too. Escayg explains, “It gives me the opportunity to interact with young children. It allows me to bring film down to a level that they can understand, and to show them how simple it can be if they just use a little 39

“The films also taught about the rough roads in life, and influenced me to stay in school and do well.”

Outreach

imagination. I got involved because it gave me the ability to give back and to inspire children to make movies— even if it is with a cellphone.”

Partnering with NGOS In previous years, the TTFC has worked with non-governmental organisations like SERVOL and the Youth Training Employment Partnership Programme (YTEPP) to screen local films for rural communities. Taking the SERVOL partnership a step further, in 2007, the TTFC and Damian Marcano, a producer from Suite Twenty Two Productions from Atlanta, worked with 25 40

Patrice Matthews

Patrice Matthews

“Film is an effective medium for sensitising audiences about social issues. People tend to pay more attention to videos than someone just talking.”

T&T Film Nights – Outdoor Cinema Showcase at the Belmont Park

members of the production class at SERVOL on a 16-minute film, Just One Time, about Aids and its impact on youth— which they had to complete in only 48 hours. The programme was free for the participants, and Marcano generously provided his time and resources at no cost. Just One Time was screened at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2007.

In the same year, the TTFC and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) set up a fruitful partnership to sponsor and extend the local reach of the annual Caribbean Travelling Film Showcase.

This programme takes films made in the region and Latin

America to over 30 countries. In both 2008 and 2009, short films, documentaries and animations produced through the TTFC’s Production Assistance and Script Development programme (PASD) made up a significant number of the films in the showcase.

The TTFC Outreach Programme has covered issues such as teenage pregnancy, HIV and discrimination, in films from the Travelling Caribbean Film Showcase like Doll House, Precious, and High Grade, and films by local producers including The Caged Bird, Kidnapped, Mandy, and Given Enough Rope.

In the face of budgetary restric-

“The films also showed children just like us going through the same problems.”

They say

Education

Photo: Rashmi Ramgosine

“The Outreach Programme really made me more interested in films, and I like that a lot.”

Pat Mohammed, Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, and a lecturer on the BA in Film, has made a series of documentaries about the region’s history, identity and iconography; the most recent, Coolie Pink and Green, was partially funded by the TTFC. Q: Why did you decide to make films to be used as a teaching aid on your courses?

A: We have moved from a writing age to a visual age and more and more we use the various visual technologies for instruction and information.

Thus we have to develop both our capacities to create material as well as our visual intelligence to be discerning about the visual media that bombard us. Making films equips me with the tools to sharpen my skills of seeing, thinking, and understanding the needs of another generation in the field of education.

Career Day at the Aranguez Government School Q: What has been the response from students to your films?

tions, the Outreach has proven to be a cost-effective way of reaching young people.

The programme is aimed at secondary school children during the school term, but during the vacations, it is extended to summer camps, homes for the underprivileged, and community groups.

The vision for the future is for the Outreach to bring in approximately 2,000 children each year from all over Trinidad and Tobago, and to continue to promote the importance of including film in the curriculum at all secondary schools, as both a teaching aid and a course of study. In targetting young people, the TTFC will add digital marketing to the mix of strategies

A: Students are growing up with this as a second sense. This is the Sesame Street/Game Boys/ video games generation, so it’s second nature to gravitate to visual data and to feel more empowered to respond to visual data. While we still require and it is necessary for them to read, working with visual media encourages a different kind of comprehension and also takes account of the different potential that students have.

TTFC CEO with Dr. Pat Mohammed

employed in reaching, engaging and exciting them, by using the media they relate to best.

The TTFC believes that its Outreach efforts are igniting sparks and fuelling a passion for film in young people, and that the programme can help the local filmmakers of tomorrow to discover their path in life.

Some students who cannot write are able to draw; some who cannot express themselves in writing are able to express themselves in images. There is an increasing interest each year in film and other visual media – many students also write me from abroad to come and work with me on projects because the work on visual iconography interests them.

Q: How have you managed to incorporate teaching on the BA in Film degree with your own film-making and nurturing students’ talent?

A: Students learn film best by making them and the teaching of film requires that we also understand the art form. This is the same as other research on the campus where professors engage their students on research projects that they are doing and in this way ensure that students learn methodologies and their art through practice. I have been fortunate to work with several students - Brianne La Bauve, Irma Rambaran, Michael Mooleedhar and Christopher Din Chong in the making of various films.

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42

Section 4

The T&T The Film Festival

43

FILM FESTIVALS AND DISTRIBUTION A bag full of goodies: Building the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival

With the financial backing and support of the TTFC, the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (TTFF) has come a long way in a relatively short time, growing from a small festival with a limited following into a major two-week “red carpet” event on the local cultural calendar. In 2009, many of the screenings were sold out and the festival was even extended by popular demand to include an extra day of screenings.

On a mission

The TTFF officially began in 2006. Today it is a marriage of three distinct festivals that are staged concurrently. The first and largest component was previously known as the Kairi Film Festival.

44

Founded in 2002, it sought to bring a diverse selection of films made in Trinidad and Tobago and the region to discerning local film buffs who wanted to see more than a “kick-up” at Globe. Thus in addition to shining the spotlight on local filmmakers and their work, and honouring those who have contributed to the Caribbean film industry, the festival has also broadened the cinematic horizons of our film-lovers.

The second component, the Animae Caribe, previously supported by the film desk at TIDCO (the state tourism agency), is a huge success in its own right, whose growth over eight years has been, as a cartoon character might say, fantastimagical.

Through its screenings of animated films from all over the world, workshops with animators from

45

The T&T Film Festival

Sesame Street and Disney, and its chalk art competitions, Animae Caribe has opened the eyes—and minds—of the younger generation to the possibilities of the world of animation.

“We’re on a mission to continue to create waves and get our work recognised around the world,” explained Camille Selvon-Abrahams (co-ordinator of Animae Caribe).

“The Caribbean is full of talented young artists and a rich culture that we need to project better. Animae Caribe is just the vehicle that is necessary to accomplish this, and we look forward to the promise and progress that the future will bring.”

Where Movies go to Towne

The Secondary Schools Short Film Competition is the third component. Hosted and administered

by MovieTowne, this competition begins with a three-day workshop run by Caribbean Media Arts. Here the youngsters learn the basics of writing a script and how to make a five-minute film.

The 2008 competition attracted participants from 22 schools; in 2009, 250 students attended the video-production training course, which was facilitated by Aya Vision.

The jury, made up of professionals in the field, selected Curepe Drumstick Robbery, produced by St Joseph’s Convent, St Joseph, as the winning entry for 2009.

MovieTowne’s Louanna Borde, who serves as director/co-ordinator of the competition, commented, “Over the last four years, we have seen some of the students who participated in MovieTowne’s short film competition being accepted into film programmes both locally and overseas, and some talented students have even been offered employment opportunities in the film industry.

46

“We feel that there is great value in using these films to educate and influence the public, whether in school or community outreach programmes or national television,” she added.

Given the tremendous growth of the Animae Caribe, plans are under way for this festival to be staged separately, to afford each festival the prominence it deserves.

Additionally, 2010 will be the year in which the TTFC assumes responsibility for the Secondary Schools Short Film Competition, building on the excellent foundation established by MovieTowne.

The 2009 festival featured work by film and animation students at the country’s two universities—some of whom had been awarded bursaries by the TTFC. The festival also incorporated additional screening venues at UWI and Naparima Girls’ High School in San Fernando.

The TTFC is proud to have been associated with these film festivals since opening its doors in 2006, and of its role in the tremendous growth and success achieved to date. More critically, the TTFC is proud of the platform the festival provides for screening the work emerging from its Production Assistance and Scriptwriting Development (PASD) programme. In 2006, the first installment of Robert “Yao” Ramesar’s trilogy Sista God, and the popular music documentary Calypso Dreams, premiered during what was then a week-long festival. Since that screening at the inaugural TTFF, Sista God, a PASD project, has appeared at Toronto’s Caribbean Tales Festival, Flash Point in Jamaica, and the Kerala International Film Festival in India as well as others around the world.

The TTFF is also in turn the perfect chance for locals to network

with and learn from international filmmakers. To this end, during the 2009 festival the TTFC sponsored panels and workshops on a number of topics: the Art of Cinematography; Alternative Marketing in the Digital Era; the Documentary: In Theory and Practice; the Use and Misuse of Archive Film Footage; and the Future of Co-productions: What Next for the Caribbean?

Now in its fourth year, the TTFF has become a must-see for regional filmmakers. In 2009, more than 60 films were screened, of which 25 were locally made. Three of these were feature films: Sista God II, The Ghost of Hing King Estate, and Bury your Mother. These were among eight that made the cut and that came out of the TTFC’s PASD programme.

Others were The Solitary Alchemist, which won the Best Local Film award (sponsored by the TTFC); and Mas Man (People’s Choice for Best Documentary). The TTFC also sponsored the award for Best Caribbean Animation, which went to Vendor Rivalry by Ansar Sattar.

The reputation of the TTFF has grown so rapidly that the Black Film Makers group (bfm) of London screened some of the best of black British cinema during the two-week run of the 2009 festival. Other

Alice Besson

Over the last four years, some of the students who participated in MovieTowne’s short film competition were accepted into film programmes both locally and overseas.

47

The T&T Film Festival

international interest in the TTFF has grown, and there were entries last year from Spain, Brazil, Nigeria, Bulgaria and Germany.

Geoffrey Holder, Marina SalandyBrown and Adoor Gopala Krishnan

In turn, Caribbean films such as A Winter’s Tale, Mas Man and Soca Power were screened at the BFM festival in November 2009.

This opened the door for Caribbean films to be seen by new British audiences, many the descendants of West Indians. Now the TTFC hopes to build on this development by establishing annual Trinidad and Tobago film festivals in Diaspora cities in the US and the UK. It has already linked up with regional festivals, such as Festival International du Film (FEMI) in Guadeloupe and the Bridgetown Film Festival in Barbados, and is championing the distribution of Caribbean films through screenings at international festivals. In 2009 The Caged Bird was shown at the Caribbean Tales Film Festival in Toronto; Happy Sad was screened at the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles; and The Power of the Vagina was seen at the Portobello Film Festival in London.

Long-term commitment

Bruce Paddington, TTFF founding member and artistic director, shares the TTFC’s commitment to ensuring the film festival’s continuing success. “One of the problems in the Caribbean,” he says, “is that too often, important initiatives start well, but do not last more than one or two years. We are determined that this will not happen with the TTFF, and that it will continue to grow from strength to strength and to play a critical role in the development of an indigenous film industry.”

Over the years the TTFC has invested over $1.5 million in the local film festival. Given the increase in 48

Marissa Burke, Rashmi Ramgosine and Brent Ramsumair

private-sector support, the festival is now less reliant on the government purse. Seizing on the festival’s potential, in 2008 the cable company Flow stepped in with a landmark multi-million-dollar commitment, set to run for three years. A further commitment was announced at the 2009 festival that its support would be extended for another three years.

This guarantees that Flow will be

the presenting sponsor of the TTFF until 2013.

With each passing year, the festival delivers on its promise to be the place where the best filmmakers in the Caribbean and Latin America want to premiere their work. But more importantly, thanks to the TTFC, it gives local filmmakers an increasingly prestigious opportunity to show their work to the world.

Section 5

Ph

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Leading Lights

49

Danielle

Alex

Camille

LEading LIghts of the Trini Danielle Dieffenthaller

For more than two decades dynamic Danielle Dieffenthaller has been a significant contributor to developing the local film industry. She’s delighted to have recently completed 100 episodes of Westwood Park, the drama series which besides presenting the many layers of this cosmopolitan society, has also trained and nurtured many aspiring film makers, actors and scriptwriters. Currently preparing to produce her first feature along with a new drama series commissioned by government, she recognises that industry awareness has grown at home and abroad, as T&T is now a destination for foreign filmmakers “So we must be doing something right.” Training is both vital and now available to aspiring filmmakers, who she advises: “Never give up.

It’s all worth it in the end.”

Alex de Verteuil

Reviewing his long career, Alex de Verteuil takes pride in “Having been able to address issues which to a large extent have been ignored locally and having stimulated debate on conservation and the environment.” He’s now concentrating on two new documentary projects: Trinidad’s Amerindian heritage and the 1970s Black Power Revolution. Acknowledging the impetus provided by the TTFC’s scriptwriting programme and the growth of the Film Festival, which encourages local filmmakers and provides “The opportunity to see their work on the 50

big screen”, he urges “anybody who’s serious” about making it in film “to enroll at the UWI Film School.”

Camille Selvon-Abrahams

Talent, vision and unrelenting determination all combine in Camille Selvon-Abrahams’ achievement of positioning Animation as a viable creative industry both at home and regionally, through her own work, teaching and the Animae Caribe festival she founded.

But she takes most pride in “creating more Animation talent in the Caribbean, empowering others and raising the artform to a new level of acceptance.” She’s still in the process of completing her 26-part Ananci TV kids’ series, while working on a script for a UK funded series: Growing Up Caribbean. While she says “The future looks great,” due to investment made by the Film Company and the Ministry of Trade, she insists a longterm vision and investment commitment are vital if the industry is to flourish. “You can’t stop,” is her advice to all aspiring animators.

Bruce Paddington

A founding father of Banyan Productions and Gayelle TV, Bruce Paddington derives a sense of achievement from “Making films on social and cultural issues.”

Among his laurels are The Dish and the Spoon, shot for the BBC and his recent documentary on the Menonites

Timmy Bruce Tony

Yao

dad & Tobago Film Industry of Belize, screened at the Havana Film Festival, which won a CBU award. As co-ordinator of the UWI film programme he’s a mentor to both students and other filmmakers funded by the TTFC in his commitment to “getting a whole series of films off the ground,” which in his capacity as Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival director he’ll have a hand in screening. He sees government investment as integral to industry development and cheap technology as an empowering tool for young filmmakers, who he encourages to “Never give up and follow your passion.”

Timmy Mora

The man who produced some of the first local ‘soaps’, Turn of the Tide, Calabash Alley along with and an adaptation of Derek Walcott’s Haytian Earth, is now working on a local drama short feature Radica, scripted

by Francis Escayg, while bringing us the TV Parliament channel daily. Timmy Mora notes recent developments in the industry favourably: “There’s a good outlook.

Lots more people are interested. Hopefully there’ll be an avenue to approach investors.” He also commends government initiative: “We’re in pre-production on three government subsidised shorts.” With over 30 years experience he advises the screen-struck to “Learn all you can,” and “to be innovative as we work with small budgets.”

Tony Hall

Another Banyan and Gayelle TV founder, Tony Hall, is proud of the Dish and Spoon documentary shot for the BBC “Which went to 108 countries, gave us the opportunity to shoot in Cuba and collaborate with British filmmakers,” and the Walk Like a Dragon documentary on the story of the steelpan. He’s now working on Yankees Gone, a full length feature of his stage play Jean & Dinah, an exciting pilot project in the co-production treaty between T&T and Canada. Looking to the future, he sees T&T as a base for producing films “For the worldwide English-speaking Caribbean audience.” “It helps to be multi-skilled,” he advises aspiring filmmakers “It’s a craft which you own and you have to conceive it as something Caribbean.”

Yao Ramesar

The ‘seeing eye of Caribbeing’ has established himself in the past two decades as one of the region’s leading cultural documenters and experimental art film makers. His postmodern apocalyptic Sista God Part 1, has won acclaim at many international film festivals.

He recalls 2006 as his annus mirabilis, when “A PhD thesis was completed on my earlier work, my first feature premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and I was named the Ansa McAl first Laureate of Arts & Letters.”

Yao thinks the future of the local film industry “Is as bright as the Caribbean sun.” While teaching film at UWI he’s also directing a Chinese/Caribbean feature 51

Christopher

Leading Lights of the T&T Film Industry G Anthony

and starting pre-production on another film he’ll write and direct. “Your camera is your pen; light your ink and your story everything,” are his directions for would-be filmmakers.

Christopher Laird

One of the original Banyan and Gayelle ‘musketeers’ and current head of Gayelle TV, Christopher Laird is proud of having “played a part in enabling us to objectify our lives by claiming a space on the screen for ourselves, our stories and traditions.” Among his many current projects are: a documentary of St Barts Film Festival; a DVD box set of Handel’s Messiah performed by the Lydians, two TV series and completing his documentary on writer Sonny Ladoo. He feels there is ample talent here to secure the future of the industry, given “serious business investment and entrepreneurship.” To future filmmakers he says: “…it takes serious personal 52

investment of self, talent and concerted effort of us all, together and not like crabs in a barrel.”

G Anthony Joseph

G’s fascination with film literally took him ‘away’, to work in America but he remains grounded in T&T and beyond his productions most values “Basic human respect in communications.” G is now extending a prolific portfolio of action, comedy, drama and thriller movies with several new productions: Trafico, to be shot in New Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago; Overkill, to be shot in Louisiana; Siege, to be shot in Georgia and the third in his local series, Men of Gray 3 — The Midnight Robber, also to be filmed in Trinidad and Tobago. The industry’s future here “is very bright as long as building more infrastructure continues…” To any brave enough to follow in his footsteps he counsels; “Learn the technical ins and outs of making and delivering a movie to international distributors.”

Anthony Frances-Anne

Frances-Anne Solomon

Frances-Anne belongs to the select cadre of prolific and highly experienced Trini diasporic filmmakers.

Trained in England, where she subsequently worked as a producer with the BBC, she began her TV career with local production house Banyan. Based in Toronto since 2000, among her directing credits are: What My Mother Told Me (UK Channel 4 1995; Lord Have Mercy, Canada’s hit multi-cultural sitcom and most recently her feature A Winter’s Tale, which won Special Mention at the prestigious African FESPACO festival in 2009. Among new projects are: Break Out, co-written with Oonya Kempadoo, produced with Lisa Wickham, and an adaptation of her stageplay Lockdown. She is energised by recent developments in the local industry: “I feel so proud to be able to be involved with all the developments taking place. Being able to make films, teach and be involved with filmmakers in T&T and the Caribbean is very, very satisfying.”

Anthony Maharaj

Internationally experienced producer/director Tony Maharaj may be termed a child of the cinema, as his parents were Caribbean distributors of Indian films and at 19 he worked on the first two features produced in the English Caribbean: The Right and Wrong and The Caribbean Fox (both 1970). His international career embraces productions in Thailand, the Philippines, the USA and T&T. He has directed numerous martial arts action movies abroad and at home and produced the local psychological thriller Shells (2000), which screened at Cannes. He was also instrumental in securing local investment in the 2002 Merchant Ivory production The Mystic Masseur, the first VS Naipaul film adaptation.

53

T h e y

s a y

T h e y

s a y

Gary Rhodes

G Anthony Joseph

The television series Rhodes Across the Caribbean featured British celebrity chef Gary Rhodes as he visited eight Caribbean islands in five weeks, learning from local chefs. At the end of his journey, he hosted a banquet in Grenada, featuring one dish from each country. The series, which was broadcast on UKTV Food, brought Caribbean cuisine to a television audience of millions in the UK.

Q: Do you think we as a people have what it takes to produce good films?

“Before we arrived in Trinidad, Hasan [Defour, a Trinidadian chef] had been telling me about how great ‘doubles’ are. These are Indian-influenced street snacks, made up of two pancakes filled with spiced chickpeas. How right he was. They were so good that I wanted to stuff my face until I couldn’t walk any more.

“I definitely want to take Jennie [his wife] to Trinidad - even if it means we go there and eat only doubles, it will be worth it.

“The food I have tasted has been sensational. This is posing a headache for me because the final show is supposed to feature just one dish from each country and I know that I will be hard pressed to decide which to choose from Trinidad because they have all been so good.”

In the end Rhodes opted for saheena with tamarind chutney, pelau, curry shrimp and paratha roti.

Danielle D i e ff e n t h a l l e r Q: How did you market Westwood Park?

A: I signed with a small distribution company in the UK called WYSIWYG Distributors and they basically marketed the show (somewhat) by shopping it to various internet sites, such as Amazon, Netflix, Lycos, Jaman, etc). Given that there’s been minimum promotion the sales are modest but in the last year have been consistent.

Q: Where has it shown?

Westwood Park has been seen throughout the English-speaking Caribbean, in the UK (seasons 1 and 2), the US (New York and the Tri-state area) and, as I understand it, pirated by Nigerian TV. We continue to enter new markets - by the end of this year we should be in South Florida - and be seen by new generations.

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A: We have the ability to produce good films - we just get in our own way. We need to listen more, understand more, how the whole process works – not just the creative process, but funding, distribution, how important stars are, and that sort of thing.

We have to understand how precisely we get what we envision to look like a movie, i.e. how the product comes out.

Q: In your opinion, how important is a film/TV industry to T&T? A: I think every country should have some sort of identity. The problem is, will the people living in that society support their own? If you do a great movie about our society of 1.3 million people, how we work and move and so on, will 500,000 come out to see it? If you don’t have support, who will pay the bills?

T h e y

Q: Can we create a niche in the film world with what resources and talent we already have or can build on?

A: Absolutely. I’m a location scout for our new film and from the time you step out your door in Trinidad, every street has character, every corner. You can go from rich to middle-class to poor in a matter of seconds, from lush green to skyscrapers in a few minutes. Just like the campaign by Jamaica, we can put the word out that we’re a great location.

And there can’t be any half measures to doing it. Get the message out about our locations, what we can offer, and go for it. If they wrap that into one, you’ll get a lot more filmmakers looking to shoot here, and who knows? It could boost tourism as well.

s a y

R o g e r A l e x i s a n d H e r m a n Ta l e s He’s only 34 but already Roger Alexis has a hit on his hands. Herman Tales is hilarious and oh so Trini – with dialect, bacchanal and enough twists and turns to turn one episode into an epic.

“I always used to play around with a video camera,” explained Alexis, “making lil movies.” Then one day he made a public film, a puppet show, which he edited on the camera itself. He showed it around. Soon enough word got around and people kept asking him to see it. So Alexis got together with two friends, Kirk Budhooram and Kenwyn Francis, to make Herman Tales.

He had always wanted to do a puppet show and they soon discovered a technique for writing real comedy.

“Nobody is totally funny all the time,” Alexis pointed out. “So what I do is write the story to set up the funny part, but I leave enough leeway to allow the actors to do their thing.” The actors get competitive – “leh me do something funnier to get more laughs” – and in any event, the shoots are always fun, says Alexis.

As scriptwriter, producer and director, Alexis has learned as he went along.

After a successful first season on Gayelle the Channel, he was shooting a second series of Herman Tales for TV6, where he is also a news cameraman. A second-year student in UWI’s BA in Film degree, Alexis was looking forward to Herman’s fourth appearance at the T&T Film Festival.

Herman, who has turned into a championship boxer for the second season, has already told his tales up the Caribbean on CaribVision. Locally, one of the film festival’s sponsors, Flow, has broadcast Herman Tales on its pay per view cable channel, with all proceeds going to the filmmaker. “We actually got some buys,” said Alexis.

Photo: Stephen Broadbridge

Section 6

LOOKING BACK

55

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But it’s only since 1999 that one such drive has been sustained, bearing fruit in 2006 with the establishment of the TTFC, which has spearheaded a consistent and carefully planned strategy to develop a viable film sector over the long term.

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For many decades there has been interest in Trinidad and Tobago as a location for film production, and over the years various attempts were made to create a national agency that could manage the development of a local film industry.

Hollywood

In the 1950s Hollywood’s interest in the Caribbean was focused on Trinidad and Tobago, and the American film star Mickey Rooney even came to Trinidad with a view to opening a film studio. Rooney felt the country had a near-perfect climate and could accommodate Hollywood’s appetite for diverse tropical locations, from the South Pacific to the Amazon. While his plans never materialised, a number of major Hollywood films were filmed in Trinidad and Tobago during this period, including Fire Down Below (1957) with Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth and Jack Lemmon, Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) with Mitchum and Deborah Kerr,

and Swiss Family Robinson (1960) with Dorothy McGuire and John and Hayley Mills.

Local efforts included, in 1956, setting up a film unit, under the Government Information Service, which answered to the newly elected Chief Minister, Dr Eric Williams. The unit brought out a number of cultural productions, as well as documentaries on aspects of national development.

Carnival and steelband were featured in Carnival in Trinidad (1959), and Eighteen on Steel (1962) was about a steelband jamboree at the American naval base at Chaguaramas, with performances by the Invaders and Sundowners steelbands and the 10th Naval District steelband of the US Navy. The Prime Minister’s Best Village Competition was featured in Folklore Festival (1967), which highlighted that year’s contest.

TV comes to T&T

But the arrival of television in 1962 led to a decline in cinema, and meanwhile the production of 35mm film was becoming increasingly expensive. Between 1971 and 1975, the film unit concentrated on producing 16mm black-and-white magazine-style programmes for television. However, it still produced occasional feature-length 35mm colour documentaries, which were shown in cinemas.

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A government television unit was established in 1972, but with very limited equipment, so it worked closely with the state-owned Trinidad and Tobago Television, and by the mid-1970s was producing a regular talk show, Face of the Nation, presented by Tony Deyal.

By the 1980s the television unit had acquired additional equipment and staff, while the film unit produced fewer and fewer films. In the 1990s its staff were absorbed into the expanded television unit, and the film unit ceased operation.

For a short period in the 1970s, Sharc Productions brought a taste of Hollywood to Trinidad and Tobago.

An experienced African-American director and editor, Hugh Robertson, headed the company. He was married to a Trinidadian, Susanne Nunez.

Sharc was dedicated to establishing a local film industry. The time was right, as the country had recently experienced a Black Power movement, and the government’s response included a Buy Local Campaign and the establishment of various initiatives and institutions.

One of these was the state-owned National Commercial Bank, and one of the companies it helped was Sharc, which was also given tax concessions and other incentives.

Sharc imported state-of-the-art production equipment and a custombuilt film production truck (soon christened the “Sharcmobile”) with all the lighting gear, cameras, dollies and grip equipment that were needed for professional film production. It set up a sound stage and film studio at the old radar tracking station site at Tucker Valley, Chaguaramas.

Bim

The company’s major achievement was the feature film Bim (1974), with a script by local writer and journalist Raoul Pantin, and a strong cast, including Ralph Maraj playing the lead, Bheem Singh (Bim), and Wilbert Holder as Wabbam, as well as music by Andre Tanker. Set in the 1950s, Bim accurately reflected the tensions between the African and Indian communities in Trinidad at the time.

Bim was very well received locally and praised for its artistry, but was not a great commercial success. It was distributed internationally, with the help of Pearl Connor in England, and shown in Africa, England and America. It won a gold medal special jury award at the US Virgin Islands International Film Festival in 1975, and in 1976 was shown at the Carifesta Film Festival in Jamaica and the Los Angeles Film Festival. Bim has not been shown commercially since its original release in 1974, although this classic film was screened at the TTFF in 2007.

It was also the last feature to be filmed in the country before the TTFC was set up. Robertson’s death in the mid-1970s brought an end to the pioneering work of Sharc.

Enter the T&T Film Company

But interest in Trinidad and Tobago had never waned, and film crews continued to come to 57

How it all began

the country as a destination for a variety of film, documentary and video productions. So in 1999 the sector began to receive renewed attention, with the implementation of a film desk at what was then the Tourism and Industry Development Company (TIDCO), headed by Carla Foderingham, now CEO of the TTFC. It was the film desk that began formally tracking the film industry’s impact on the economy, which revealed compelling statistics in support of reviving the sector.

A noteworthy fact emerged: from 1999 to 2006, an estimated 200 film projects contributed over US$3 million to the local economy. And that total was achieved without incentives, marketing, industry training, or infrastructure. It showed that the sector was a goldmine of possibilities.

So, recognising how much a nurtured and purposefully evolved film industry could contribute to the economy, in 2005 the government pulled together a team of experts in the field, whose task was to create a comprehensive strategic plan to develop the sector. What emerged from this critical exercise was a blueprint for creating a vibrant and holistic film industry, led by the newly formed TTFC, the national agency that would implement the vision. The rest is history in the making.

The first Indian films

It was not only Hollywood films that had an impact on the Caribbean public. Films imported from India had a major influence on the large East Indian populations in Trinidad and Guyana. It was in 1935, with the Hindi-language film Bala Joban, that Indian cinema in Trinidad really began.

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Ranjit Kumar, an Indian-born civil engineer, brought Bala Joban and a number of other popular Indian films to Trinidad, including Afzal, Chabukwali, Jungle Ka Chavan, Andaz, and Midnight Mail.

Early local film

There were early attempts at indigenous filmmaking in Trinidad in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The pioneer was Louis Tucker, a photographer who had made some short documentary films, including films for the local tourist board. In 1932, Tucker directed Trinidad’s and most probably the Englishspeaking Caribbean’s first dramatic film, Dead Man’s Gold. Trinidadian writer Alfred Mendes (grandfather of British-born director Sam Mendes) played the lead role. His portrayal was so popular that children used to shout “Dead Man’s Gold!” when he passed in the street.

Trinidad’s first cinema

Trinidad’s first cinema, the London Electric Theatre, opened on February 2, 1911, on French Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain. The opening night’s show was advertised as “The World Before Your Eyes.”

The programme comprised nine silent short films, as well as current news and events. Admission cost 24, 16 or 8 cents.

Owned by the brothers Marcus and Reginald Davis, the cinema was managed by the musician and entertainer Lionel (“Lanky”) Belasco, who played piano to accompany the screenings.

The growth of cinema

The London Electric did not remain Trinidad’s only cinema for long. In 1915, an American cinema

tycoon, George Rosenthal, set up the New City Theatre on Oxford Street, Port of Spain. In 1916, Lanky Belasco opened the Olympic Theatre in Belmont. By 1919, another cinema, the Electric Central Theatre, was up and running. In 1930, Rosenthal’s Empire Theatre showed the first “talkie,” or “talking movie,” in Trinidad, Flight.

Local merchants Noor Gokool Meah and his two sons built the Metro Cinema at the corner of Park and St Vincent Streets in Port of Spain. Opened in 1933, it soon became known as the Globe. The Roxy in St James, with a seating capacity of 900, opened in 1934.

Outside Port of Spain, by 1938 there were 15 cinemas, in San Juan, Tunapuna, Sangre Grande, Arima, Chaguanas, Couva, Princes Town, San Fernando (three), Fyzabad, Siparia, Penal, Point Fortin and La Brea. By the 1940s there was a cinema capacity of over 15,000 seats.

The first local feature films

The first feature films produced in the English-speaking Caribbean by a local company were The Right and The Wrong (1970) and Caribbean Fox (1970). Both were made on location in Trinidad and Tobago and directed by the Indian-born Harbance Kumar.

The Right and the Wrong was filmed at Five Rivers, Arouca.

Scripted by Freddie Kissoon, it starred an American actor, Frank Raiter, as Malcolm, a sadistic slave owner, and Gloria David as the beautiful slave Didi. It also featured local actors Angela Seukeran, Ralph Maraj, Jesse MacDonald, Shirley King, Wilbert Holder, and Kenneth Boodhu, and the Guyanese poet and performer Marc Mathews.

The film was historically inaccurate, as it showed African and East Indian slaves working together, though East Indians did not arrive in the Caribbean until after the abolition of slavery. But it proved very popular in the region.

Caribbean Fox was also made in 1970. The assistant director was Anthony Maharaj, who would go on to direct and produce international and local feature films.

Caribbean Fox also starred Seukeran, David, Maraj, Holder and MacDonald, and featured calypsonians the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Christo, with a music track composed by Anthony Prospect of the Police Band.

Sir Lancelot

One of the first Trinidadians to make a name for himself in Hollywood movies was Lancelot Pinard, better known by his calypso sobriquet, Sir Lancelot.

His film career started with an appearance as a backup singer in Two Yanks in Trinidad (1942), and included a scene in To Have and Have Not (1944) with Humphrey Bogart.

His final on-screen appearance was in the swashbuckling The Buccaneer (1958), with Anthony Quinn and Yul Brynner.

In all, Sir Lancelot appeared on camera in a dozen films, as well as doing voice-overs and soundtrack work on two or three more. He also

worked in radio and television, had a lengthy recording career, and performed in many countries. As a black actor in Hollywood in the Forties and Fifties, he was often given minor parts as servants, but was able to stand out in whatever roles he was given.

Sir Lancelot sang two numbers in a high-budget Paramount musical, Happy Go Lucky (1942), in which he led a band and sang “Ugly Woman” by the Roaring Lion (recorded in 1934, the song was one of the best known calypsoes in America). In I Walked with a Zombie (1943), a cult classic in the United States, Sir Lancelot played a calypsonian, and sang his very popular “Shame and Scandal in the Family.”

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DE LUX

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EMPIRE

IF LIFE IS A RED CARPET PREMIERE, WHAT AM I DOING IN PIT?

by BC Pires

“Every Belmont youth had to break biche once/ To go Olympic theatre” – David Rudder, from the song, “Belmont”.

FORTY YEARS AGO, Port of Spain had half-a-dozen grand cinemas (Globe, De Luxe, Roxy, Vistarama, Strand & the Astor) and as many semi- or outright dives (National Cinemas I & II, Empire, Pyramid, Royal, Olympic and that one in Besson Street). Only Globe screens films today. De Luxe is a nightclub, Roxy, a pizza joint. Strand walks a tightrope between “live performance

space” and “abandoned building”.

Most of the rest are Pentecostal churches (admission: ten per cent of your monthly income; script quality, dubious); but, as a teenager at CIC, for half-a-dollar, five cents more than the cost of a pack of Broadway cigarettes, I could choose between a dozen films whenever we got a “cricket” half-day holiday.

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GL OB

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DE LUX

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If life is a red-carpet premiere...

At De Luxe, uptown, there would be something the President of the Chamber of Commerce would take his family to. The only physical separation between mid-price “house” and cheap “pit” seats was a low wooden barrier and, after the intermission in a double feature, the denizens of pit swarmed house; accordingly, respectable parents sent their children to “balcony”, where you literally and figuratively looked down on people; and sometimes, some people spat; until the tickettearer threw them out. De Luxe was Jerry Lewis and Peter Sellers, The Sound of Music and Tarzan Finds a Son. Strand leant towards the literary worth – The Deer Hunter and The Godfather. Globe was all action – and still is; indeed, Wesley Snipes has a better chance on the Globe screen than in the cinema itself today. Roxy and Astor were De Luxe outposts.

(Then cinema proprietor, Yvonne Morgan née Roodal, would rent one copy of a film and show it at three different starting times and cinemas on the same day, with each reel, the moment it was shown, being bicycled to other cinemas, the usher pedalling furiously between Roodal’s Royal in east Port of Spain, De Luxe and Roxy in St James.)

Most cinemas, though, would trawl for schoolboy tickets using the best bait: kung fu kick-ups; and sex doubles. (If The Libertines and The Hot Box ring a bell, you’re on my side of 50 and have held up a poster of Pam Grier with one hand.)

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In those cinemas, as David Rudder sings, “we didn’t care what was showing on the screen/ The real show was in there”; and we adolescent schoolboys were extras.

The charade began with turning our blue-grey school shirts inside out; with the pocket embroidery hidden, we might at least be mistaken for errant pupils of CIC’s sister college, Fatima.

Collars turned up, we shambled to the ticket window to spit out, “One”, as gruffly as our squeaky voices permitted. National Two had a strategic advantage of a right-angle bend immediately before the window, so the seller didn’t actually see you until the last moment, and had to sustain for only one second the pretence that the nervous 13-year-old in front of him was an adult. (The undeserved entry to a “21 & Over” was a rite of passage; and it came at the bend in a cinema corridor.)

You couldn’t lose, watching a movie from pit. If the picture was good, you could claim you saw it before anyone else, jammed up there under the screen. If the movie was bad, the show actually got better; because the audience would shred the movie live for your amusement; the creators of MST3K could have been inspired by a 12:30 in Pyramid.

VS Naipaul himself, in “A Middle Passage”, I think, recounts Rita Hayworth in a Strand screening of Affair in Trinidad, declaiming, “I’m from Port of Spain”, only to have

someone in pit shriek, “You lie!”

And it was in pit-self I heard the most succinct film review ever: as the audience filed out, stunned silent by the film’s immense awfulness, a Rastaman removed his spliff from his mouth just long enough to say, “Hear, nuh, that movie wasn’t release’; it escape!”

The times, and their cinemas, have changed. Little brown paper bags of popcorn and green-bottle “small Cokes” have been replaced by monster versions, sold at monster prices, in greaseproof cardboard.

Today’s high definition film and surround sound is far better; and only De Luxe’s overstuffed “box” seats could compare with today’s smoothly tilting armchairs; but the films themselves aren’t necessarily better; indeed are usually worse.

Watching movies itself, though, hasn’t changed at all, in one way, and has dramatically, in another. Settle down in MovieTowne to watch Che or Rain or Sista God II. The lights will go dim; the curtains will shake as they are drawn right back, just like in Empire; in the silent, cool darkness, in that split second between real and imagined world, a middle-aged man can become an open-mouthed teenager. That hasn’t changed. But, this year, at the 2010 Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, you’ll be watching films from here, about here, right here. Vive la difference.

Section 7

Stephen Broadbridge

Going forward

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E H T S E O WHAT D tobagofilm.com

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D E 62V E L O P I N G T H E F I L M I N D U S T R Y I N T R I N I D A D A N D T O B A G O

outlook

by Carla Foderingham

In three years the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company (TTFC) has created several programmes that have supported local talent and created new opportunities. Films that have come out of these programmes have created a new level of cultural content and changed the landscape, with local films being shown to local, regional and international audiences.

For instance, the Trinidad and Tobago films JAB, Coolie Pink and Green and Sista God were recently screened to appreciative audiences in Asia and Africa.

But will the future find independent local filmmakers emerging to claim their space within the evolving world of cinema, television and new social media? What we have is an opportunity—an opportunity to expand our society in new and innovative ways through the development of our film industry.

All the elements are there. We are a creative and dynamic society, our people have many, many stories to draw from, and the world is open to new and different experiences in film.

On the business side, though, it could appear that we are slow to invest in initiatives that involve the arts and culture. It is a matter of confidence and taking new risks together. The country will be the better off for investing in film. We need to see ourselves and reflect ourselves back to ourselves and the world. We are a culturally rich

society, and we need to accept and invest in this reality.

The strategic plan for the industry emphasizes the development of content and capacity. The TTFC’s content programmes—the Production Assistance and Script Development Programme, Short Dramas and the Feature Film Programme—have been adapted from that plan. The TTFC is embracing opportunities to create partnerships and co-productions with other countries to help produce more local content. Finance will be sourced through collaborations and co-productions and funding by the private sector and the government.

Some are already in progress.

Trinidad and Tobago has been courted by countries that include Cuba, France and India. Bilateral agreements have supported films such as Rose, Calypso Diva (France/ T&T) and the 2010 Bollywood movie Dulha Mil Gaya, which was filmed on location here.

Opportunities for filmmakers to collaborate with their European counterparts are likely to increase as the EU Economic Partnership Agreement comes fully on stream.

ACP-EU funding has already helped to create programmes to support local filmmakers, and in 2009, a film exchange programme funded by the ACP-EU supported the screening of locally-made films (Soca Power, Happy Sad) at the BFM UK Film Festival. Such opportunities will help local filmmakers build bridges to new markets and festivals.

The industry will also be boosted by the creation in 2009, of the Caribbean AudioVisual

Photo: Alice Besson

If the recent successes of Trinidad and Tobago filmmakers are any indication of its potential, the future of the local film industry looks bright.

Network, which aims to facilitate business development and trade on behalf of the regional members, and which will support Trinidad and Tobago’s film producers with training, marketing and distribution, and access to funding. These collaborations within the region and internationally will lead to greater business opportunities, the strengthening of regional audiovisual networks despite language barriers and distance, and a future in which Caribbean cinema will be screened at prestigious film festivals and theatres around the world.

The TTFC’s chairman, Ralph Maraj, notes, “Partnerships will allow for collective strategies to overcome the trade imbalances in the film industry that constrain entry into the mainstream markets of developed countries. The forging of new alliances at regional and international levels, and the lobby for international funders to provide more training, funding, and exchanges to the Caribbean film industry, are seeds being planted today to ensure the opportunities of tomorrow.”

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What does the future hold?

Incentives for private-sector investment and sponsorship are also in progress, including tax rebates for sponsors of film. Once these are introduced, the partnership between the private and public sector will be enhanced. In addition, the Venture Capital Programme has been approached for funding on behalf of filmmakers. There is much work to be done in convincing local and regional financial institutions of the viability of the industry, but as the region collaborates and more films are made, hopefully, hesitant investors will see the industry as worthy of investment.

Local films have faced constraints in distribution both at home and internationally, and distribution will be a critical measurement of the industry’s growth. There are many new models and platforms, for example YouTube and Facebook, which are becoming alternatives to traditional methods of distribution and exhibition.

The emergence of new technology and new media has helped countries like Trinidad and Tobago, and has given a wider range of people greater access to the industry.

Technology has made filmmaking more affordable and accessible, and it is now easier for local filmmakers to tap new markets. These trends are expected to continue.

The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival is another distribution opportunity that will undoubtedly be sustained, with support from the private and public sectors. The fourth festival, in 2009, screened 73 films, of which 35 per cent were by local filmmakers. The Animae Caribe Animation and New Media Festival celebrated its eighth year in 2009, and the success of the local animation sector is certain to continue. The sector is becoming 64

well established, with the recent introduction of the animation programme at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. The Full Circle Productions animation studio now employs eight full-time animators to work on projects outsourced from Canada. The outsourcing model was used to develop the Indian animation industry, and Trinidad and Tobago may well see employment and investment opportunities arising from this niche market.

The Trinidad and Tobago Film Company also intends to develop a Trinidad and Tobago Film and Animation Festival in the diaspora markets of New York, London, Miami and Toronto, from 2010.

The partnerships that may result from these screenings could provide investment and other support for the national film industry.

The TTFC will continue working to provide competitive incentives that will position Trinidad and Tobago as a film-friendly location, and to communicate the positive experience of filming here. By enlisting overseas representation and networking for the local film industry, stronger alliances and partnerships can be forged. So, in keeping with global trends, the TTFC will make more use of digital and targeted niche marketing to attract film projects for which Trinidad and Tobago is suited, while building our capacity to service a wider range of projects.

Magazine Credits:

Diversification is about generating new business, new investment, and employment opportunities. It is also about changing attitudes and appetites. As a people we love to “go cinema”—so will the local public support local films and buy in to this evolving industry? The expansion of cineplexes across the country and the increasing number of television stations suggest the answer is yes.

In addition, the TTFC has instituted community screenings across the country, in an outreach programme which will offer public screenings at a nominal cost. The Mayors of Port of Spain, Arima, Pt Fortin, Chaguanas and San Fernando, have supported it, and there are plans to include Tobago as well.

The future is encouraging. It is expected that audiences at local annual film festivals will grow, that broadcasters will take a more progressive stand and produce and screen more local material, and that local films will be screened in new markets.

The agency dedicated to this industry’s development—the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company—is keeping its eyes on the prize, and is committed to taking the risks and putting down foundations for the future.

Trinidad and Tobago films will soon be coming to a screen near you!

Copyright©Trinidad and Tobago Film Company, 2010.

All Rights Reserved.

Copy Editor: Judy Raymond Design & Layout: Paria Publishing Co. Ltd. Contributing writers: Ralph Maraj, Carla Foderingham, Nazma Muller, Jessica Joseph, Bruce Paddington, BC Pires, Raymond Ramcharitar, Simon Lee and Patrice Matthews.

Photo credits: Peter Halstead (cover), Sharon Aleong (TTFC Ad-Tobago Scene), Stephen Broadbridge (Section 7 photo), Marissa Burke (Section 3 photos). All other images credited with the photo.

Printing by: The Office Authority Print Division.

Produced in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.