Aba A Luke

Cre­at­ed by a 25-year-old cen­tral Trinidad na­tive, a new re­al­i­ty TV se­ries is card­ed to hit the lo­cal screen by Ju­ly this year. Ac­cord­ing to cre­ator, Maria Lewis, the 12-episode re­al­i­ty se­ries, which is en­ti­tled Kul­ture Keep­ers, will test 13 con­tes­tants on how well they know lo­cal cul­ture. "I be­lieve T&T has so much tal­ent and cul­tur­al ma­te­r­i­al which de­serves to be show­cased on tele­vi­sion and film," said Lewis, adding, "this is why I've re­turned to Trinidad and de­cid­ed to delve in­to our lo­cal film in­dus­try. I want to make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to this in­dus­try and Kul­ture Keep­ers is my first step in get­ting there."

She in­di­cat­ed that her new tele­vi­sion se­ries would bring youths be­tween the ages of 16 and 25 in touch with the his­to­ry and cul­tur­al em­bod­i­ment of the is­land. Each episode of Kul­ture Keep­ers will be shot out­doors, at var­i­ous places around the coun­try. Con­tes­tants and view­ers alike will be ex­posed to cul­tur­al his­to­ry about the Amerindi­an in­flu­ence, the East In­di­an and African in­flu­ences, the im­pact of Chi­nese set­tlers in T&T, To­ba­go Her­itage, and even so­cio­cul­tur­al ills ex­pe­ri­enced in T&T. "Each week, one per­son with the least amount of knowl­edge on lo­cal cul­ture, will be elim­i­nat­ed," said Lewis, as­sur­ing that the show will be an ex­cit­ing one for the en­tire fam­i­ly. She said elim­i­na­tion would be based on the per­son's fail­ure to suc­cess­ful­ly com­pete against oth­ers in var­i­ous tests and tasks.

Lewis is the mas­ter­mind be­hind lo­cal pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny MKL Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed. Her pas­sion to high­light what she felt was a need to bet­ter ex­pose the is­land's youth to var­i­ous facets of lo­cal cul­ture was bred dur­ing her years of study­ing and liv­ing abroad. "I stud­ied Film and Dra­ma at Kent Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land," she ex­plained. Up­on com­ple­tion of her course at Kent, she went on to at­tain her mas­ters de­gree in Fea­ture Film Screen Writ­ing at the Roy­al Holl­away, which is a mem­ber in­sti­tu­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. When Lewis re­turned to T&T in 2009, she worked with a lo­cal me­dia house in the pro­duc­tion de­part­ment be­fore branch­ing off on her own in Jan­u­ary this year as the di­rec­tor of her own com­pa­ny, MKL Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed.

"This is our first project," she af­firmed, adding that oth­er key peo­ple be­hind the scenes were, Leslie-Ann Her­cules, Keron Yan and David George. "I got to­geth­er with a group of young peo­ple I knew from Gayelle be­fore I went abroad to study and we de­cid­ed that there was a need for such a film se­ries in Trinidad," said Lewis. She said her aim was to do a film se­ries that was fun, prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed and ed­u­ca­tion­al.

Ac­cord­ing to Lewis, Kul­ture Keep­ers will be all of this and much more, as it will of­fer youths and adults alike an op­por­tu­ni­ty to test them­selves on their knowl­edge of all things lo­cal. The grand prize win­ner will re­ceive a trip for two to To­ba­go com­plete with ac­com­mo­da­tion.