To­bag­o­ni­ans turned out in force last Fri­day for the NGC-spon­sored In­de­pen­dence Film Se­ries in which two clas­sic movies with con­nec­tions to To­ba­go were screened to a packed house. Fire Down be­low, the 1957 Hol­ly­wood ad­ven­ture dra­ma shot in T&T, and Hur­ri­cane Flo­ra a doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices (GISL) in the af­ter­math of the dead­ly 1963 hur­ri­cane that dev­as­tat­ed To­ba­go, played to a full house at Movi­eTowne, To­ba­go.

As riv­et­ing as the night's screen­ings were the mem­o­ries about both events that mem­bers of the au­di­ence shared in a post-screen­ing chat gave an au­then­tic com­mu­ni­ty feel to the evening. NGC's spon­sor­ship sup­ports and helps fa­cil­i­tate the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val's ini­tia­tive to take to com­mu­ni­ties films which have been pro­duced lo­cal­ly, or which have a lo­cal di­men­sion. NGC's spon­sor­ship is spe­cial­ly fo­cused on car­ry­ing the view­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to com­mu­ni­ties in To­ba­go, San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin.

Next Tues­day, the lo­cal block­buster Bim will be screened at San Fer­nan­do Hill along­side Best Vil­lage Fi­nals 1967. On the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day the TTFF car­a­van heads to the Point Fortin Pub­lic Li­brary for a show­ing of The Louis Broth­ers (13-min) dou­bled with Men of Grey II: Flight of the Ibis (94 mins). The shows be­gin at 7 pm. NGC's sup­port for the blos­som­ing lo­cal film in­dus­try is among the com­pa­ny's gifts to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to mark the 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. The com­mu­ni­ty screen­ings are be­ing pre­sent­ed un­der the ti­tle "Side By Side" which is a joint ini­tia­tive of the TTFF and the In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee for the Cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th An­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. All shows are free and open to the pub­lic.