Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Lo­cal film­mak­er Christo­pher Din Chong be­lieves that by stim­u­lat­ing young peo­ple's in­ter­est in film pro­duc­tion, T&T can build the pro­fes­sion­al skill set need­ed to de­vel­op its film in­dus­try.

Just last month, Din Chong re­turned from Cu­ba where he was in­vit­ed to ob­serve a new film­mak­ing project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UK-based or­gan­i­sa­tion First Light that trains young peo­ple be­tween the ages of five and 25 years to de­vel­op skills in film and me­dia pro­duc­tion.

He and own­er of Full Cir­cle An­i­ma­tion Stu­dio Camille Selvon-Abra­hams were in­vit­ed to act as ad­vis­ers in the project ti­tled Ca­ma­ra Chi­ca and host­ed by La Fac­ul­tad Arte de los Medios de Co­mu­ni­ca­cion Au­dio­vi­su­al (FAM­CA) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Arts in Ha­vana. The project in­clud­ed a se­ries of sev­en projects in six Cuban provinces.

Adopt­ing this men­tor­ship role was noth­ing new for Din Chong, how­ev­er. Through­out his ca­reer, he has tu­tored stu­dents in the T&T Sec­ondary School Short Film Fes­ti­val, the Na­tion­al Open School of T&T and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T.

In 2011, he es­tab­lished the For­ward Ever Foun­da­tion with the aim of in­tro­duc­ing young peo­ple to the world of film­mak­ing. He hoped the foun­da­tion would of­fer pos­i­tive in­flu­ences for young peo­ple through men­tor­ship and train­ing pro­grammes while pre­sent­ing a ca­reer op­por­tu­ni­ty that made use of their in­her­ent cre­ativ­i­ty.

In a re­cent tele­phone in­ter­view, Din Chong said he and Selvon-Abra­hams were sent to over­see the project in Cu­ba and to de­ter­mine whether or not sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive could be launched in Com­mon­wealth coun­tries.

"We had the job of au­dit­ing or ad­vis­ing dur­ing the train­ing ses­sions which cov­ered the ba­sics from sto­ry­telling, doc­u­men­taries, edit­ing, sound, an­gles and oth­er tech­niques. It was very sim­i­lar to the work­shops that we (the For­ward Ever Foun­da­tion) do down here so in the post-mortem, we told the or­gan­is­ers that a project like this could def­i­nite­ly be re­pro­duced down here in T&T."

He said the British Coun­cil ap­proached him to be a part of the Ca­ma­ra Chi­ca project since they had al­ready seen some of his pre­vi­ous work. Ear­li­er this year, he was com­mis­sioned by the British Coun­cil to pro­duce a film as a part of its In­ter­na­tion­al In­spi­ra­tion pro­gramme which us­es sport to en­rich the lives of chil­dren and dis­abled peo­ple in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Din Chong filmed the lo­cal edi­tion of the pro­gramme in a docu­d­ra­ma called The Sin­ga­pore Promise that fea­tured sto­ries of by young ath­letes in the fields of track and field, swim­ming, cy­cling, ta­ble ten­nis, archery and mar­tial arts.

Hot on the heels of his Cu­ba trip, Din Chong has re­turned to T&T with re­newed vigour and plans to host sim­i­lar work­shops for chil­dren through­out the coun­try. In the last year, with the help of oth­er film prac­ti­tion­ers like Mikkell Khan, Che Ro­driguez and Maria Lewis, he host­ed two one-day work­shops for chil­dren in east and south Trinidad de­signed around his own film­mak­ing cur­ricu­lum. At the ses­sions, par­tic­i­pants were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to write, di­rect, ed­it, pro­duce and act in their own one-minute film. He said the feed­back from the kids has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive.

"The work­shops would be three hours long and re­al­ly we just want­ed to pique the young peo­ple's in­ter­est. The work­shops were very suc­cess­ful be­cause the kids were re­al­ly open. They were like a sponge soak­ing up all the in­for­ma­tion we had to share."

Din Chong is cur­rent­ly fo­cused on ex­pand­ing the reach of the foun­da­tion and has de­cid­ed to part­ner with Selvon-Abra­hams through her an­i­ma­tion fes­ti­val An­i­mae Caribe which starts in late Oc­to­ber. The For­ward Ever Foun­da­tion al­so plans to host film work­shops for kids through­out T&T lat­er this year.

For more in­for­ma­tion on the foun­da­tion, vis­it its web site at: www.for­warde­v­er­foun­da­tion.net.