Sean Nero

Lo­cal film mak­ers will­ing to sign over rights to their movies to lo­cal ca­ble com­pa­ny Flow (Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions), can be­gin reap­ing fi­nan­cial re­wards al­most im­me­di­ate­ly says the com­pa­ny's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Bri­an Collins.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian at Wednes­day's launch of the tenth An­nu­al T&T Film Fes­ti­val (ttff) at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain, Collins said: "If they give us the rights to it, we will ac­tu­al­ly show it in our oth­er mar­kets. We are cur­rent­ly in eight mar­kets in the Caribbean.

"Our goal would be that all lo­cal movies have the abil­i­ty to be shown in T&T and watched by all of our cus­tomers, and up the is­lands. That would be our dream. That is what we want to do and that av­enue is there for them to do it. They hope­ful­ly will em­brace the deal for what it is and move for­ward to see that it is a vi­able al­ter­na­tive than just go­ing through the tra­di­tion­al movie the­atres. There are oth­er av­enues to do this."

Collins added: "Since our start with the Film Fes­ti­val, eight years now, we of­fered pro­duc­ers and di­rec­tors of movies the abil­i­ty to show their movies via our Video On De­mand (VOD) plat­form. So ef­fec­tive­ly, they have that. We have al­ways said that it was avail­able. All monies raised from that–that we take from our cus­tomers–will be passed on, 100 per cent of it to the pro­duc­ers."

He al­so an­nounced his com­pa­ny's plans to ex­pand its sup­port of the fes­ti­val by in­tro­duc­ing an Am­a­teur Film Award which will be an in­cu­ba­tor where new­com­ers to the film in­dus­try will be paired with more ex­pe­ri­enced prac­ti­tion­ers to pro­duce works for the 2016 edi­tion of the fes­ti­val. Un­der the plan, 12 emerg­ing film mak­ers will be cho­sen.

"They will be paired with a lo­cal film pro­duc­ers and di­rec­tors to give them the nec­es­sary guid­ance to bring their ideas in­to life. We will sup­ply them with the equip­ment and then it will be aired at the Film Fes­ti­val next year and peo­ple will be able to chose which one is the best. I think it's a very ex­cit­ing idea and it brings film mak­ing out­side of the uni­ver­si­ty and pro­fes­sion­al film in­dus­try in­to the com­mu­ni­ty and we are re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about it," Collins said.

"We are eight years in­to a ten-year spon­sor­ship. We hope to do an­oth­er five-year spon­sor­ship in two years' time. We see this as a long term plan and we have in­vest­ed a lot of mon­ey in this fes­ti­val. I would say $8 mil­lion. Again, it just shows our com­mit­ment to lo­cal pro­duc­tion, lo­cal artistes, lo­cal ac­tors, lo­cal movie mak­ers that Flow is here to sup­port them through the Fes­ti­val and where we can and where we think it ap­pro­pri­ate to sup­port them di­rect­ly, as well."

Collins praised the de­ci­sion by the ttff or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee to cre­ate a data­base where films can be archived and cat­e­gorised.

"It's a re­al­ly good idea. A lot of times peo­ple don't nec­es­sar­i­ly know where to go and get these Caribbean movies. With a cen­tralised data­base that's been both archived and cat­e­gorised, it makes it eas­i­er to pick out what you want to watch, with the pow­er of when you want­ed to watch it. We are go­ing to try and col­lab­o­rate with Bruce Padding­ton, fes­ti­val founder, and his team and make sure that we spread this as far and wide and shout from the rafters if we pos­si­bly can, be­cause we are very ex­cit­ed about this."

From the in­cep­tion of the com­pa­ny's part­ner­ship with the ttff, said Collins, Flow has worked to un­der­stand the vi­sion and pas­sion of the or­gan­is­er. Once their pas­sion be­came clear, the com­pa­ny en­tered in­to a five-year spon­sor­ship deal which al­lowed them "to go off and plan way in ad­vance and set things in mo­tion."

"That, I think, has al­lowed the Film Fes­ti­val to ac­cel­er­ate in its growth over this pe­ri­od of time to be­come the pre­mier film fes­ti­val in the re­gion and to be one of the most recog­nised around the world. We are just here to sup­port them. They have the vi­sion. They un­der­stand the in­dus­try bet­ter than we will ever do. Our job is to make sure that they have the fi­nan­cial sup­port and where need be for the busi­ness sup­port and the tech­nol­o­gy sup­port to el­e­vate this even fur­ther," he said.