Michelle Loubon

Cass­ian Gyan, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd, says Flow has con­tributed about $1 mil­lion to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val. Speak­ing at the fes­ti­val's me­dia launch at Carl­ton Sa­van­nah Ho­tel, St Ann's, yes­ter­day, Gyan said: "It is a nat­ur­al fit. Flow and TTFF. We want to open doors and op­por­tu­ni­ties to make it more ac­ces­si­ble and cre­ate aware­ness. We have seen a growth in in­ter­est in films. We are pleased to be the spon­sor for an­oth­er three years. We pledge our sup­port to its growth and de­vel­op­ment." She al­so said 100 per cent of the prof­its would be re­turned to the film­mak­ers.

Dar­ryl White, Head of In­vest­ment Bank­ing at RBTT Fi­nan­cial Group, said it con­tributed CAN$900,000 (TT$3 mil­lion) to the Cana­di­an Film Fes­ti­val and an undis­closed ex­or­bi­tant sum to the T&TFF. He said: "The TIFF Tal­ent Lab is an in­ten­sive pro­gramme that pro­vides artis­tic de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties to emerg­ing Cana­di­an film­mak­ers. The goal is to help young artists bridge the gap from the aca­d­e­m­ic world to pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers." "In 2009, more than $900,000 Cana­di­an dol­lars was in­vest­ed in ap­pren­tice­ship, in­tern­ship and artist recog­ni­tion pro­grammes."

Quizzed on the amount, they had in­ject­ed for RBTT, he said: "I can tell you it is a lot. But we want it to be seen as an in­vest­ment in the youth."

These were among the monies which would be in­ject­ed in­to the cal­en­dar of ac­tiv­i­ties and the de­vel­op­ment of youth in­ter­est­ed in film­mak­ing and cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Young peo­ple will al­so ben­e­fit from the tute­lage of Kit­ti­cian Car­ol Phillips and Brazil­ian di­rec­tor Daniela Thomas. To date, about 300 school chil­dren from sec­ondary schools in To­co, Moru­ga and To­ba­go have em­barked up­on film­mak­ing projects on themes like "A Day In My Life" and "Keep It Clean." They will be fea­tured dur­ing the fes­ti­val's run from Sep­tem­ber 22 to Oc­to­ber 5.

Car­la Foder­ing­ham: 'Tap in­to en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try'

Car­la Foder­ing­ham, CEO Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny, wel­comed their fi­nan­cial in­put since she said it was im­por­tant to re­spond to the call for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the T&T econ­o­my. She said: "If we un­der­stand oil and gas are fi­nite, and our cre­ativ­i­ty is in­fi­nite, then we have to put in the build­ing blocks. "We have to put in the plan­ning and the re­sources so it could come to fruition. Then we would be able to reach out to the al­most low hang­ing fruit."

"We are an in­stinc­tive­ly cre­ative peo­ple. Suf­fice it to say, we have Car­ni­val and Pe­ter Min­shall. We have to ex­pand it across the spec­trum. It should re­flect the over­all cre­ativ­i­ty of us as a peo­ple," added Foder­ing­ham. She said by tap­ping in­to the full po­ten­tial of the film in­dus­try it would as­sist in cre­at­ing sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment, wealth cre­ation and new op­por­tu­ni­ties for the youth. "The en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try brings in bil­lions. We want to de­rive in­creased ben­e­fits," she said. She al­so said it was nec­es­sary to de­vel­op the in­dus­try and wel­comed on board new stake­hold­ers like Arnold John, Tracey David­son-Ce­les­tine and Os­wald Williams from To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly.