Nine film and TV projects for chil­dren have been ap­proved for fund­ing un­der the Pro­duc­tion As­sis­tance and Script De­vel­op­ment (PASD) pro­gramme of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC). The ap­pli­cants were giv­en PASD awards on Au­gust 2 at the TTFC of­fices, Bret­ton Hall, Port-of-Spain, in a brief cer­e­mo­ny.At the cer­e­mo­ny, TTFC chair­man Christo­pher Laird not­ed how scarce Caribbean chil­dren's con­tent has been. He said that in spite of the de­mand by ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cies, ed­u­ca­tors and psy­chol­o­gists for Caribbean chil­dren's con­tent in film and TV, it is still dif­fi­cult to get spon­sor­ship for these projects.Laird al­so said, "Much more care has to go in­to chil­dren's pro­gram­ming than to adult pro­gram­ming" be­cause of how sen­si­tive and vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren are to what they see on TV and in films.The TTFC re­ceived dozens of ap­pli­ca­tions from the 2013 call for sub­mis­sions of chil­dren's con­tent, which closed on May 31. There were 25 com­plet­ed ap­pli­ca­tions ac­cept­ed, and these were passed to an in­ter­na­tion­al ju­ry in Ju­ly.

The ju­ry met at the TTFC from Ju­ly 26-27 and chose the nine suc­cess­ful ap­pli­ca­tions.Jim Corston, Cosi­ma Ame­lang and Deb­bie Ja­cob com­prised the ju­ry. Corston is Toron­to-based ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er with some 40 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in both gen­er­al and chil­dren's TV pro­duc­tion for chan­nels in the US, Cana­da and the UK. Ame­lang is as­sis­tant fes­ti­val di­rec­tor of the Chil­dren's Film Fes­ti­val Seat­tle. Ja­cob is an au­thor of chil­dren's books, a teacher and li­brar­i­an, who was born in the US and has lived in Trinidad and To­ba­go for some 30 years.Corston said the ju­ry's role was to de­cide on the "yeses, nos, and maybes," and to de­cide on the lev­el of fund­ing to be giv­en to suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants. Ju­ry mem­bers brought their own cri­te­ria to the ta­ble, giv­en their di­verse back­grounds, they found it rel­a­tive­ly easy to agree on the top se­lec­tions, they said.PASD-sup­port­ed projects are men­tored by a mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee of lo­cal in­dus­try ex­perts. Laird asked the grantees to strive to work with the com­mit­tee. "We will help as much as we can to get you to get [the projects] right. None of us have the amount of ex­pe­ri­ence that big film­mak­ers have abroad, so it's al­ways use­ful to have feed­back."

The projects ap­proved were: Sal­ly's Way (Joanne John­son and Louris Lee Sing); Av­o­ca­do and Zabo­ca (Son­ja Du­mas); A Steel­pan Sto­ry (Bev­er­ly Singh); Su­per Sen­sei (Cathy-Mae SitaRam); Hey Leroy! (Roger Alex­is); Pi­john (Christo­pher Din Chong); JJ and Friends (Rod­ney Seemu­n­gal); Su­per Me (Jaime Lee Loy); and Why the Fox Left Trinidad (Steven Ed­wards).Roger Alex­is, whose com­e­dy I'm San­tana was one of the most fi­nan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful lo­cal films ever, said his project was a se­ries of 20 TV fillers–very short pieces each un­der five min­utes long–fea­tur­ing a Caribbean boy named Leroy. Like San­tana, Leroy is a pup­pet. "What I want to do is take it re­gion­al­ly, and teach our kids from a Caribbean eye," he said. "We all know about ap­ples and pears, but let's talk about man­goes; in­stead of vam­pires, let's talk about soucouyant."

Joanne John­son based Sal­ly's Way on an il­lus­trat­ed read­er she wrote that was pub­lished in 2002. The 50-minute script about a girl or­phaned by HIV/Aids was al­so de­vel­oped with a PASD grant. John­son said she was moved to "present Sal­ly as a pos­si­bil­i­ty for our chil­dren, where she is able to tap in­to the cre­ative po­ten­tial to change our cir­cum­stances."Rod­ney Seemu­n­gal, well known for his pop­u­lar TV se­ries and live shows JJ and Friends, will make six ad­di­tion­al episodes of the se­ries with his PASD grant. He said the show is dis­trib­uted by Tem­po to some 26 sta­tions in the Caribbean.A Steel­pan Sto­ry, Bev­er­ly Singh's project, is a short film based on one of a se­ries of books she has pro­duced; it fol­lows the film A Parang Sto­ry. She said she had al­ready pro­duced a ver­sion of the steel­pan film and it was a hit with au­di­ences when she screened it, but that she want­ed to make it over with high­er pro­duc­tion val­ues. This was her first ap­pli­ca­tion for a PASD grant.