On Sun­day evening at The Har­vard Club in St James, more than 130 pa­trons came out to sup­port lo­cal film and en­ter­tain­ment as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC), in as­so­ci­a­tion with "sis­ter" agency Trinidad and To­ba­go En­ter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny (TTENT), pre­sent­ed its first lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty-based screen­ing of Dark Tales From Par­adise. The long await­ed pro­duc­tion fea­tures three short sto­ries by lo­cal, up and com­ing film­mak­ers Ryan Khan, An­dre John­son and Fran­cis Es­cayg.

Khan's pre­sen­ta­tion, The Mid­Nite Af­fair, tells of an Amer­i­can schol­ar who va­ca­tions with his 'tri­ni' girl­friend and finds that there might be more to the lo­cal folk­lore than he has re­searched in his stud­ies.

Sweet TnT by John­son ex­plores the twists and turns of a re­la­tion­ship be­tween a "is­land boy" and his British girl­friend and begs the au­di­ence to ask "What in­deed is the price of love?" Es­cayg's film Rad­i­ca treats with the ef­fects of death and su­per­nat­ur­al be­liefs on a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty's way of life. Au­di­ence mem­bers sighed, screamed and laughed dur­ing the pro­duc­tion, which is a wel­come re­sponse from any film­mak­er. Some pa­trons de­scribed the film as "fun, scary and in­ter­est­ing" while oth­ers com­ment­ed that more lo­cal pro­duc­tions are nec­es­sary as it is "good en­ter­tain­ment." Pa­trons were treat­ed to a live per­for­mance by Kin Sound Sys­tem, one of three lo­cal bands fea­tured on the film's sound­track.

This is a prime ex­am­ple of how film com­bines a se­ries of cre­ative and oth­er sec­tors to cre­ate one pro­duc­tion there­by gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment and rev­enue for a num­ber of ser­vice providers from set builders to taxi op­er­a­tors; cater­ers to make­up artists and light­ing tech­ni­cians to ac­tors. This is why the lo­cal film in­dus­try is ear­marked as one of the key sec­tors to as­sist in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the na­tion's econ­o­my. Dur­ing the very en­gag­ing ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion, one mem­ber of the au­di­ence asked about the mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion ef­forts of lo­cal films to which the film­mak­ers re­spond­ed that a lot of it had to do with lo­cal mar­kets de­mand­ing more of "our own pro­duc­tions and en­ter­tain­ment" which pro­vides the launch pad to take our cre­ative prod­ucts re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

For more in­for­ma­tion vis­it www.trinidadand­to­bagofilm.com