Rapheal John-Lall

The lo­cal busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty needs to be con­vinced it is prof­itable to in­vest in T&T's film in­dus­try, said Anne-Marie Stew­art, ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the lo­cal­ly pro­duced film, Hero.

Hero is a 75-minute fea­ture doc­u­men­tary in­spired by the life of T&T na­tion­al and re­tired judge Ul­ric Cross, now 94, whose life achieve­ments spans be­ing a pi­lot in World War 11 to an ad­vis­er in post-in­de­pen­dence Africa.

In 1941, Cross en­tered the Unit­ed King­dom's Roy­al Air Force and be­came the most dec­o­rat­ed West In­di­an squadron leader of World War II.

He al­so played a key role in the post-in­de­pen­dence po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of African coun­tries like Ghana, Cameroon and Tan­za­nia, and was even an ad­vis­er to Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah.

Cross's life spanned many decades and his­tor­i­cal eras. Work on the film be­gan about five years ago and it has passed through dif­fer­ent stages. The film­mak­ers hope to com­plete the doc­u­men­tary in 2014.

They ex­pect to pro­mote the film lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly once pro­duc­tion is fin­ished. Caribbean­Tales World­Wide Dis­tri­b­u­tion is the com­pa­ny that will be dis­trib­ut­ing the film around the world.

Stew­art spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian last month at Medul­la Art Gallery, Fitt Street, Wood­brook.

"The tech­nol­o­gy has tak­en us in­to a com­plete­ly new era. The dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy has made films rel­a­tive­ly ac­ces­si­ble and cheap. T&T Film Com­pa­ny, on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment, is giv­ing a re­bate of 150 per cent of the con­tri­bu­tion to film, up to $2 mil­lion," Stew­art said.

"When I spoke to peo­ple about mak­ing fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tions to the film, no­body picked up on that. I do not know if the con­cept of film is so new to the cor­po­rate sec­tor here."

Fund­ing

The film would cost rough­ly $3 mil­lion by the time it is com­plet­ed, which, Stew­art said, is "not much."

She said peo­ple are no longer read­ing and film is a good way to spread mes­sages.

"First of all, our sto­ries need to be told and there are a mil­lion of them in this coun­try, but they are not be­ing told. Peo­ple are not read­ing any more. Peo­ple are look­ing at videos and it is a medi­um to make it ac­ces­si­ble. It would seem to me that busi­ness peo­ple should un­der­stand the po­ten­tial for that.

"First of all, if they make con­tri­bu­tions, they get the tax re­bates and they get men­tioned in the cred­its of the film. And this film will be shown in the re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The ad­ver­tis­ing reach for those who in­vest in this is world­wide and their name will be all over the place."

Stew­art, a man­age­ment con­sul­tant by pro­fes­sion, said this is the first time she is pro­duc­ing a film, get­ting fund­ing for which has been a chal­lenge.

"I have al­ready ap­plied to On­tario Arts Coun­cil and they have pro­vid­ed mon­ey for it and I have al­so ap­plied to the Cana­di­an Fed­er­al Coun­cil, but I have not heard from them as yet. Apart from the $100,000 the T&T Film Com­pa­ny in­vest­ed, I do not have any gov­ern­ment fund­ing and it is not that I did not try to get it."

The hunt for fund­ing does not take away from T&T's film­mak­ing po­ten­tial.

"The tech­nol­o­gy is easy now. Peo­ple have a cam­era, equip­ment and they record. With tech­nol­o­gy, it is very easy to shoot com­plex scenes. At the end of it, it looks like a Hol­ly­wood film," she said.

The film­mak­ing in­dus­try al­so gen­er­ates jobs.

"In mak­ing a film, there is the di­rec­tor, pro­duc­er, sound sys­tem and each of those has about two or three spin offs," she said.

She said T&T's cor­po­rate world would be mak­ing a mis­take to ig­nore the po­ten­tial of a film in­dus­try.

"I would say that the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is very fool­ish not to see the po­ten­tial in this be­cause of the ad­ver­tis­ing reach, and be­cause of the jobs it cre­ates, then there is the 150 per cent re­bate they get. I do not un­der­stand how the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty can­not see the ben­e­fits of this," she said.

Among the cor­po­rate en­ti­ties the film has part­nered with are: Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce T&T, BG T&T, Kalloo's Au­to Rentals, Taxi Ser­vice and Tours, Medul­la Art Gallery, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny, the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, Kapok Ho­tel, T&T Film Com­pa­ny and Veni Mange restau­rant.

The film has al­ready been cer­ti­fied by the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism.

Stew­art said all spon­sors will be ad­ver­tised with name, lo­go and brand­ing in the film cred­its.

Home Again

Stew­art re­ferred to the movie, Home Again, that was shot in T&T in 2012 and pre­miered in the first week of April at Movi­eTowne.

The cast of Home Again in­cludes Fresh Prince of Bel Air's Tatyana Ali, Cana­di­an rock star, FeFe Dob­son and CCH Pounder, from the Shield, Avatar, Bagh­dad Cafe and Law and Or­der.

The Cana­di­an film tells the sto­ry of three young peo­ple who were de­port­ed from met­ro­pol­i­tan cities back to their home­land–Ja­maica–and the chal­lenges they face in com­ing to terms with the re­al­i­ty of be­ing in a strange place with no fam­i­ly, no mon­ey and no sup­port sys­tems.

The movie used 1,200 lo­cal ac­tors and ex­tras at such lo­ca­tions as the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, Sea Lots and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall.

"The film, Home Again, about Ja­maica was shot here. That is be­cause the T&T Film In­dus­try is giv­ing all kinds of con­ces­sions for film­ing here. So a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny makes a film about Ja­maica and shoots in T&T to get ac­cess to re­sources.

"We are not tak­ing ad­van­tage of that," Stew­art said. "If oth­ers are do­ing it, so should we."

Bio of Ul­ric Cross

Re­tired Trinidad judge Phillip Louis Ul­ric Cross was squadron leader of 139 "Ja­maica" Squadron.

He lat­er held the po­si­tion of chief li­ai­son of­fi­cer for de­mo­bil­i­sa­tion of all colo­nial forces, ably as­sist­ed by Ja­maican-born flight lieu­tenant Dud­ley Thomp­son.

Cross served as a judge in Ghana, Cameroon, Tan­za­nia and T&T. He lat­er served as am­bas­sador of T&T to Ger­many, France, Nor­way and High Com­mis­sion­er to the Unit­ed King­dom.

He spoke of his life, his mil­i­tary ex­ploits and oth­er achieve­ments in an April 2008 in­ter­view with Gabriel J Chris­t­ian, who wrote For King & Coun­try - The Ser­vice and Sac­ri­fice of the Do­mini­can Sol­dier, with Irv­ing An­dre.

"Af­ter high school (at St Mary's Port-of-Spain), I worked for a while with the Trinidad gov­ern­ment on the rail­road. But, by 1941, Britain stood alone. Dunkirk had been a de­feat for Britain and Hitler had con­quered all of Eu­rope. The world was drown­ing in fas­cism and Amer­i­ca was not yet in the war, so I de­cid­ed to do some­thing about it and vol­un­teered to fight in the RAF.

"We took the ship Strathall for 12 days days, straight to Greenock. A lor­ry await­ed us and took us straight in­to the uni­form of the RAF and train­ing. So from No­vem­ber 1941 to No­vem­ber 1942, I trained at Cran­well on the wire­less, did me­te­o­rol­o­gy, bomb aim­ing, nav­i­ga­tion and Morse code. I grad­u­at­ed as a pi­lot of­fi­cer and was as­signed to bomber com­mand I served as a nav­i­ga­tor in the Pathfind­er sec­tion of 139 squadron; the fa­mous "Ja­maica Squadron" of the RAF.

"The pathfind­ers led the way on bomb­ing raids and marked the tar­get; a most dan­ger­ous task. Our unit flew the fa­mous Mos­qui­to bomber, which was made main­ly of wood. Ja­maica had paid for many of the planes of 139 squadron, hence the name.

"There was al­so a Trinidad Squadron, where Trinidad had paid for those planes. I was the on­ly West In­di­an on my squadron. I was lucky to have served at fixed pre-war bases such as Marham, Wyton and Up­wood. The fixed bases were more com­fort­able. There were many oth­er tem­po­rary bases which had been scat­tered across the Unit­ed King­dom.

"I flew 30 mis­sions over Ger­many and oc­cu­pied Eu­rope. Af­ter 30 mis­sions, one earns a rest and can di­vert to teach­ing oth­er pi­lots, etc. How­ev­er, I was in­ter­est­ed in con­tin­u­ing the mis­sion. At 50 mis­sions, they again asked me to take a rest. I de­clined and flew 80 mis­sions over Ger­many and oc­cu­pied Eu­rope be­fore the war end­ed. I did 22 mis­sions over Berlin and made it through much flak; but one had to fo­cus on the mis­sion.

"My most har­row­ing mis­sion was when one of the en­gines of our Mos­qui­to fight­er-bomber was shot up over Ger­many and we came down to 7,000 feet from 35,000 feet. We strug­gled back to Eng­land and crash land­ed in a quar­ry. It was a nar­row es­cape, but we made it out alive.

"The nav­i­ga­tor is key, as we are the ones who tell the pi­lot how to get to and from the des­ti­na­tion or tar­get. I end­ed the war as a squadron leader and was then sent to the Colo­nial Of­fice to act as li­ai­son for all colo­nial forces. It was there that I was phoned and ad­vised that I was award­ed the Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice Or­der. A plane was sent for me and I was giv­en the award and we had a par­ty.

"In all, 250 Trinida­di­ans flew in com­bat in the RAF dur­ing the war and 50 died in ac­tion. Many hun­dreds more, maybe more than 1,000 served with oth­er West In­di­ans as ground crew.

"Our Trinida­di­an con­tin­gent al­so had peo­ple of In­di­an, Chi­nese and Eu­ro­pean ori­gin. I knew Dyra­m­ple of Do­mini­ca (Ed­ward Sco­bie) and would meet him when we went down to Lon­don. Dud­ley Thomp­son of Ja­maica was a flight of­fi­cer and he was my as­sis­tant at the Colo­nial Of­fice af­ter the war."

(caribbeanair­crew-ww2.com)