Sean Nero

Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters, Min­is­ter of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is in­sist­ing that this coun­try's film in­dus­try can­not grow on tal­ent alone.He said fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment was cru­cial and called on the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty to take a clos­er look at in­cen­tives that would be worth their while when they help de­vel­op this non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at 14th EU Film Fes­ti­val host­ed by the Em­bassy of the King­dom of the Nether­lands on Oc­to­ber 19, at Movi­etowne, Wood­brook, he called on busi­ness­es to help bol­ster this emerg­ing cre­ative econ­o­my."The tax break for com­pa­nies in­vest­ing in the per­form­ing arts has been in­creased from $1 mil­lion to $2 mil­lion dol­lars.

"It is ex­pect­ed that this de­vel­op­ment will be a cat­a­lyst for greater in­volve­ment of the pri­vate sec­tor in the cul­tur­al in­dus­tries of T&T," he said.He told the gath­er­ing about this coun­try's rich lega­cy in the the­atre arts which would pro­vide the edge need­ed in the de­sire to es­tab­lish a well con­sti­tut­ed lo­cal film in­dus­try that would pos­i­tive­ly af­fect growth in the same area re­gion­al­ly.

"The EU Film Fes­ti­val is an im­por­tant chan­nel through which film afi­ciona­dos in T&T can view the abun­dance of cre­ative tal­ent that abounds with­in the Eu­ro­pean film in­dus­tries."I cer­tain­ly be­lieve that with show­cas­es of this na­ture and clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion, the cre­ative econ­o­my of the Caribbean will grow.

"The gov­ern­ment of T&T and by ex­ten­sion the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism are play­ing our part in en­sur­ing that the en­vi­ron­ment ex­ist to fa­cil­i­tate that ex­pres­sion of the cre­ative en­er­gies of our peo­ple," he said.