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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Mooleedhar, a film-maker with cool

by

20120913

As the 2012 Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val draws near­er, Michael Mooleed­har, di­rec­tor of this year's en­try The Cool Boys us­es the word "op­por­tu­ni­ty" to de­scribe this re­gion's bud­ding cre­ative sec­tor. The 27-year-old film­mak­er plans to utilise this op­por­tu­ni­ty to move to the next stage of his ca­reer and con­tribute to the over­all el­e­va­tion of the lo­cal/re­gion­al film in­dus­try. Armed with a Film De­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), and hav­ing done his break through doc­u­men­tary film Queens of Curepe (2008), Mooleed­har has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed on Coolie Pink and Green (which won Peo­ple's Choice award ttff 2009) and Sev­en­teen Colours and a Sitar (2010), Kim John­son on The Au­dac­i­ty of The Cre­ole Imag­i­na­tion (2010) and count­less oth­er pro­duc­tions. Of­ten de­scribed as a "boy won­der" by many of his con­tem­po­raries, Michael is cur­rent­ly step­ping up his game by pur­su­ing a MA in Cre­ative De­sign En­tre­pre­neur­ship at UWI and is due to fin­ish in De­cem­ber 2012.

He shared, "I'm present­ly en­rolled in this rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­gramme that deals with de­sign and the busi­ness of cre­ative prod­ucts. I want­ed to go back to school to learn about the busi­ness side of my in­dus­try as I re­alised how much of an artist I was be­com­ing and how much of the busi­ness as­pects and needs for my cho­sen craft I had been over­look­ing". Mooleed­har af­firms that the film in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean is a wide open field of op­por­tu­ni­ty for the in­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative will­ing to take on the chal­lenge of an in­dus­try in its ear­ly stages of de­vel­op­ment. "I would re­al­ly like to see the Caribbean pro­duc­ing more fea­ture films es­pe­cial­ly now as tech­nol­o­gy al­lows for cheap­er pro­duc­tion costs and I be­lieve a coun­try as cul­tur­al­ly rich as T&T should be pro­duc­ing at least two fea­ture films a year." In ad­di­tion to tour­ing and hav­ing his pre­vi­ous film projects screened and sold around the world in coun­tries such as In­dia and Cana­da, Mooleed­har re­cent­ly di­rect­ed a TV cook­ing se­ries for CNC 3 en­ti­tled Christ­mas Cook­ing with Khalid which fea­tured renowned chef Khalid Mo­hammed. How­ev­er, he ad­mits that his lat­est un­der­tak­ing The Cool Boys was his great­est test and learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to date. "It was my first time di­rect­ing ac­tors on such a large set and with a bud­get. I took on the chal­lenge and be­lieve it was a crit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in my ca­reer to get me to the next lev­el of film­mak­ing."

The Cool Boys which was writ­ten for a pro­duc­tion call that was put on by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny, re­flects many re­al ex­pe­ri­ences and char­ac­ters from Mooleed­har's own life. "Film is the ge­nius art form, the uni­verse has to con­spire with you to cre­ate the film you want to make. When sound and vi­su­als work per­fect­ly to­geth­er mag­ic takes place," he said. He views the work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed and him­self as one that has con­tributed im­mense­ly to build­ing the re­gion­al film in­dus­try. He di­vulged that they both present­ly are at work on fu­ture projects and have plans to make fea­ture films and to form a for­mal brand to rep­re­sent all of their pro­duc­tions. He fur­ther stat­ed, "As a film­mak­er my team and I are tru­ly thank­ful for the sup­port from The Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny who fund­ed The Cool Boys. We ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the co­op­er­a­tion of fam­i­ly, friends, cor­po­rate en­ti­ties as well as the en­cour­age­ment fel­low prac­ti­tion­ers, cri­tiques and fans." As an artiste, a vi­sion­ary and a young en­tre­pre­neur, Michael Mooleed­har has big dreams for him­self and the in­dus­try and is work­ing hard to­wards mak­ing them be­come a re­al­i­ty.

• The Cool Boys will show dur­ing the 2012 trinidad+to­ba­go film fes­ti­val on the fol­low­ing dates:

Fri­day, Sept 21 at 6.15pm, Movi­eTowne PoS,

Mon­day, Sept 24 at 3.30pm, UWI, Cen­tre for Lan­guage Learn­ing Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 1 at 6.30pm, Movi­eTowne PoS

Mon­day, Oc­to­ber 1 at 6 pm, Movi­eTowne To­ba­go

Fol­low Michael Mooleed­har on Twit­ter via @Mooleed­har and fol­low The Cool Boys on Face­book http://www.face­book.com/cool­boys­the­movie


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