The Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val (TTFF) and Flow are invit­ing film­mak­ers to sub­mit short films on the top­ic of In­de­pen­dence to a film com­pe­ti­tion cel­e­brat­ing the coun­try's 50th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary. En­ti­tled Side by Side, in trib­ute to T&T's na­tion­al an­them, the com­pe­ti­tion is seek­ing the best 50-sec­ond films that ex­press what In­de­pen­dence means to the film­mak­er. Sub­mis­sions will be ac­cept­ed on any in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the word "in­de­pen­dence," and film­mak­ers are en­cour­aged to be as cre­ative as they wish and ex­plore any as­pect of what the word means to them. The com­pe­ti­tion is open to film­mak­ers of all ages, am­a­teurs as well as pro­fes­sion­als.

Sub­mis­sions will be ac­cept­ed un­til Au­gust 1. Di­rec­tors of the five best films will each win a Flow pack­age of ser­vices, val­ued at a to­tal of $40,000. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the best film over­all will be award­ed $5,000 at the TTFF awards cer­e­mo­ny on Sep­tem­ber 30. Films are to be sub­mit­ted via pri­vate link on YouTube and must be of a min­i­mum res­o­lu­tion of 720 by 480 NTSC. The 50-sec­ond film com­pe­ti­tion is part of a wider TTFF/12 Side by Side In­de­pen­dence Show­case, to take place in Au­gust, which will al­so in­clude com­mu­ni­ty screen­ings through­out both is­lands and an ex­hi­bi­tion of cin­e­ma his­to­ry in T&T from 1945–1999, at the Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of -Spain.For more in­for­ma­tion on the Side by Side com­pe­ti­tion, vis­it www.ttfilm­fes­ti­val.com , call the TTFF of­fice at 621-0709 or e-mail hel­lo@ttfilm­fes­ti­val.com