Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Four T&T film­mak­ers have been cho­sen to take part in the Caribbean­Tales In­cu­ba­tor (CTI) 2016.Green­light­ed for the CTI are projects by Juli­ette Mc­Caw­ley, Kafi Ka­reem Far­rell, Sean Hodgkin­son and Au­ro­ra Her­rera.

Mc­Caw­ley's pre­vi­ous projects have in­clud­ed The Apart­ment, A Boy's Choice, Drink, and One Good Deed. She is an ac­tress, di­rec­tor and pro­duc­er. Her te­len­ov­ela project Bit­ter Fruit is be­ing spon­sored by the T&T Film Co for the CTI.

Big Man Dan, an an­i­mat­ed com­e­dy se­ries by Kafi Ka­reem Far­rell, has al­so been se­lect­ed. Far­rell is a screen­writer and mul­ti-plat­form me­dia pro­duc­er; her past projects in­clude the short film Thanks and Giv­ing. She has worked for Dis­ney In­ter­ac­tive and is now a con­tent pro­duc­er for Sto­ry Play Me­dia Group and is based in T&T.

Sean Hodgkin­son and Au­ro­ra Her­rera are in the CTI this year to work on a "risqu� melo­dra­ma" called The Week­end. Hodgkin­son is best known for his film Traf­ficked and the two-part A Sto­ry About Wendy. Traf­ficked will have its Cana­di­an Pre­miere at the Caribbean­Tales In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the CTI.

"Big Man Dan is a quirky an­i­mat­ed com­e­dy web se­ries fol­low­ing the an­tics of Dan, a man with a mag­net­ic at­trac­tion to trou­ble and a tal­ent for telling tall tales," wrote Far­rell in re­sponse to an emailed re­quest for in­for­ma­tion on her CTI project.

"The project is the first orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion emerg­ing from Sto­ry Play Stu­dios, a new­ly es­tab­lished Trinida­di­an me­dia com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to de­vel­op­ing, pro­duc­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing qual­i­ty script­ed con­tent for Caribbean au­di­ences.

"The com­pa­ny's team is made up of film and an­i­ma­tion pro­fes­sion­als who put sto­ry­telling first and be­lieve that see­ing your cul­ture cel­e­brat­ed on screen is a pos­i­tive­ly trans­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ence.

"That, ul­ti­mate­ly, is what Big Man Dan is; a cel­e­bra­tion of the mag­ic that lies with­in the every­day, com­mon place Trinida­di­an ex­pe­ri­ence."

The 31-year-old said, "CTI of­fers an in­cred­i­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther de­vel­op the se­ries' pitch pack­age and mar­ket­ing plan with in­sight from in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als out­side the project's core team. This ex­ter­nal feed­back is in­valu­able since it's easy to get lost in your own cre­ative for­est."

Her­rera, a 30-year-old some­time Guardian free­lancer who is ap­ply­ing for her PhD in jour­nal­ism law, has host­ed, pro­duced and di­rect­ed, as well as been a cast­ing di­rec­tor and blog­ger, among oth­er things. She worked as first as­sis­tant di­rec­tor with Hodgkin­son on Traf­ficked; The Week­end sees them pair­ing up again with her as pro­duc­er and him as di­rec­tor.

The pitch for the new project sounds com­plex: "The Week­end looks at the in­ti­mate con­nec­tions be­tween a di­verse group of friends over a nine-year pe­ri­od in­clud­ing Gregg, a suc­cess­ful film­mak­er who has just end­ed a ten-year re­la­tion­ship.

"Gregg is at­tempt­ing to re­con­nect with his for­mer BFF and muse Heather, who starred in Gregg's first two films, Bougainvil­lea Dreams and Un­der the Sycamore Tree; Heather has turned her back on act­ing and tele­vi­sion af­ter Gregg gave away her part to Claire in Gregg's pre­vi­ous film, Four Days in the Sun.

"Gregg's in­ner cir­cle in­cludes his child­hood best friend Col­in, who is mar­ried to up­tight Cristi­na. Ganesh, a for­mer New York so­cialite, who was dumped by his lover and has re­turned to Trinidad, jilt­ed and pen­ni­less; Patrice, Trinidad's num­ber one florist, and his part­ner Is­sac, a re­cov­er­ing drug ad­dict who is hav­ing a clan­des­tine af­fair with Si­ta, the cur­rent styl­ist on Gregg's film Smug­gler's star­ring Claire and mod­el turned ac­tor Maxime."

Whew.

"The film is a study of re­la­tion­ships," Hodgkin­son and Her­rera wrote in their emailed re­sponse to the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion.

"Every­one will be able to re­late to the in­ter­twin­ing sto­ries of this group of friends. We hope that it will make peo­ple laugh and al­so re­flect on their per­son­al sto­ries. We al­so re­al­ly want to put our Caribbean-ness with all of its rich­ness that we are so proud of, on a glob­al plat­form."

Far­rell, Her­rera and Hodgkin­son are all en­thu­si­as­tic about the po­ten­tial the CTI could un­lock for their projects. A ma­jor spon­sor of the CTI is telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant Flow, which opens up oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties.

"Of course, Flow's part­ner­ship with CTi al­so promis­es a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to get our se­ries fund­ed," wrote Far­rell.

"It would be amaz­ing to get fund­ing to turn The Week­end in­to a minis­eries," said Her­rera and Hodgkin­son.

"We have out­lines for sev­en more episodes. We would al­so like to show our tal­ent re­gion­al­ly and glob­al­ly and that we can pro­duce an eco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able prod­uct based on Caribbean con­tent that dif­fer­ent di­as­po­ras will en­joy.

"We want to do well but win­ning isn't every­thing. We look for­ward to de­vel­op­ing our pitch­ing skills, net­work­ing with like mind­ed cre­atives from the re­gion and achiev­ing what we set out to do with The Week­end, make film for the pure joy of cre­at­ing."

The CTI is a project of Caribbean­Tales World­wide, a Caribbean-based con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion and de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny. Its founder Frances-Anne Solomon has pre­vi­ous­ly told the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion the in­cu­ba­tor is de­signed to help Caribbean film­mak­ers mon­e­tise their con­tent. It takes place an­nu­al­ly dur­ing the Toron­to Film Fes­ti­val.