Mark Lyn­der­say

On May 12, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC) met to con­sid­er the strate­gic plan for the film in­dus­try for the next four years. There was a bit of world-weari­ness mixed in with some hon­est am­bi­tion at the event, held on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, but stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions are not just a re­quire­ment for the TTFC. The lead­ing pro­gramme that the state en­ter­prise is man­ag­ing to­day, the Pro­duc­tion and Script De­vel­op­ment (PASD) pro­gramme, emerged from the floor at the first con­sul­ta­tion in 2005. Up for dis­cus­sion was a 26-page ab­stract of the 200-page doc­u­ment, pre­pared by Lahiri School of Busi­ness Man­age­ment, which sought to ad­dress the mis­sion state­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, "To cre­ate and main­tain a sus­tain­able and vi­able film in­dus­try and to pro­mote T&T as the pre­mier film lo­ca­tion." Prac­ti­cal­ly jump­ing off the pages was the con­flict be­tween the am­bi­tions of the Film Com­pa­ny and its painful­ly slim bud­get and ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty.

The last bud­get re­quest to gov­ern­ment from the TTFC was for more than $20 mil­lion to cov­er a dizzy­ing range of projects, which in­clude film sup­port, screen­ings, fes­ti­vals and fund­ing to sup­port lo­cal pro­duc­tions. They got $6.5 mil­lion. The plan for the next four years is no less am­bi­tious. The suc­cess­es of the last four years, with stu­dents grad­u­at­ing from UWI's Film school (dis­clo­sure: I am a part-time lec­tur­er there), the School's Film Fes­ti­val, more pro­duc­tions get­ting crit­i­cal fi­nanc­ing from the PASD pro­gramme and the suc­cess of projects like I am San­tana en­cour­ag­ing even more en­thu­si­asm for the medi­um will tax the re­sources of the TTFC and bring chal­lenges un­fore­seen in 2005. Among them are prac­ti­cal mat­ters like sub­ti­tling and dub­bing to im­prove dis­tri­b­u­tion in the re­gion. This is a step that needs to be han­dled prop­er­ly, or films get trans­lat­ed from the sub­lime to the lu­di­crous in one easy step. It's se­ri­ous enough to the life of a film in a lan­guage-frac­tured re­gion like the Caribbean with its Latin Amer­i­can neigh­bours that the IADB is con­sid­er­ing fund­ing cen­tres for trans­la­tion and UWI is be­ing con­sid­ered as a lynch­pin re­source for the tick­lish busi­ness of trans­lat­ing West In­di­an Eng­lish in­to for­eign lan­guages.

Copy­right lawyer An­tho­ny Viera not­ed that civ­il penal­ties for IP pira­cy are more puni­tive than crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions. Reme­dies are avail­able but aren't be­ing used. For­mer COTT di­rec­tor Alvin Daniell not­ed that in 1998, 100 cas­es were brought be­fore the courts for pira­cy in­frac­tions and not a sin­gle case re­sult­ed in a pros­e­cu­tion or a penal­ty. Po­lice of­fi­cers were said to be nei­ther equipped nor in­ter­est­ed in pur­su­ing such cas­es with dili­gence. Should pi­rates be per­suad­ed to be­come dis­trib­u­tors of lo­cal films? It wouldn't be the on­ly provoca­tive ques­tion to be asked that morn­ing. Son­ja Du­mas not­ed the chal­lenges that for­eign film­mak­ers and pro­duc­ers have en­coun­tered with cus­toms and crime as stalling points for bring­ing pro­duc­tions to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In re­sponse, Pat Mo­hammed sug­gest­ed that the TTFC should be­gin look­ing at Caribbean is­lands like the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, the Ba­hamas and Puer­to Ri­co which have suc­cess­ful­ly sold them­selves as lo­ca­tions for films. It wasn't all dour con­tem­pla­tion of seem­ing­ly in­sur­mount­able chal­lenges. Two lo­cal stu­dents have been in­vit­ed to study an­i­ma­tion in In­dia as a re­sult of the Jan­u­ary 2012 state vis­it. Film al­so looks set to be­come part of the CXC syl­labus as part of a cre­ative stud­ies course with op­tions in dance, dra­ma and cin­e­mat­ic arts ex­pect­ed to go live in 2014. The chal­lenges of the next strate­gic plan will not be in build­ing, but in con­sol­i­dat­ing the suc­cess­es of 2005-2012 in­to some­thing that looks more like a sus­tain­able in­dus­try.

Read an ex­pand­ed ver­sion of this col­umn here: http://ow.ly/adAll.