Local films supported by the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company (TTFC) were quite well-received at the recent T&T Film Festival (TTFF). Some of these films benefited from Production Assistance and Script Development (PASD) grants which enable filmmakers to develop and produce work. Recently, at a ceremony at the TTFC's Bretton Hall office on Victoria Avenue, Port-of-Spain PASD grants were awarded to eight productions and one script chosen from those entered during the 2012 call for submissions. The winning projects selected by the independent jury include films for children and young adults, an under-represented genre in the burgeoning Caribbean cinema movement.
Actor/director Errol Sitahal was awarded a grant for his project Crabman and Sandbird, a film about a friendship between a grief-crippled old man who rescues a young boy from drowning at Mayaro. Children's author Joanne Johnson was awarded a grant for her script Sally's Way, based on her illustrated book of the same name. Also receiving grants for films for young people were Omar Lewis, for The Wonderful World of Myat: Myat and her Fear of the Dark; Revelino Guevara for The Butterfly Princess and Truman Samerson for Brian and the Magic Bird. "We don't have much children's stuff," said Samerson, a London-trained animator who is adapting a local book for this, his first film.
"I just want to change something locally so that we could have something to hold on to that is part of us, that is our culture." Cultural autonomy is also one of Sitahal's goals. "I'm really grateful they chose the film. What I hope to do is make something totally local; I intend to use a local crew and all local actors, and it will aim for the highest possible technical standards and aesthetic standards. People should be using the grants to... explore the aesthetics we have. We are chasing after an aesthetic that is peculiar to ourselves. I also want to explore our (Creole) language and its capacity for expressing feelings."
Three of the PASD-supported film projects are animated films and the others are live action. Jean-Claude Cournand was given a grant for his film The 2-Cents Project 2013, which will illustrate 12 poems by spoken word artists, and Karen Martinez for her project After Mas, a love story. The projects are expected to take between 15 and 18 months to complete. The PASD programme has contributed to dozens of film projects since its inception in 2004. Ten PASD-supported films were screened in this year's TTFF, which ran from September 19 to October 2. Many of these films were sold out and had to have additional screenings scheduled, including Sean Hodgkinson's A Story about Wendy, Michael Mooleedhar's The Cool Boys and Kevin Adams' No Soca, No Life.