Valdeen Shears-Nep­tune

T&T has joined the ranks of coun­tries such as South Africa, Spain, Cana­da and Turkey and launched its in­au­gur­al fash­ion and arts film fes­ti­val.

The Caribbean Fash­ion and Arts Fea­ture Fes­ti­val will hold its first edi­tion on No­vem­ber 17� 19 in the Bor­ough of Ari­ma and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties in East Trinidad. The fes­ti­val's launch took place No­vem­ber 4, at Akim­bo, Pro Queen Street, Ari­ma.

The three-day fes­ti­val is the brain­child of co-founders of Akim­bo, Kevon Foder­ing­ham and Karen Kennedy; it was born out of Akim­bo's in­volve­ment in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed T&T Film Fes­ti­val.

"The re­sponse to screen­ing of fash­ion films here at Aki­mo was warm­ly re­ceived and from per­sons who were not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­volved in the fash­ion in­dus­try," Foder­ing­ham said.

"Gov­ern­ment, through Cre­ativeTT, has been urg­ing peo­ple to get more in­to the cre­ative in­dus­tries, with a view to di­ver­si­fy. We want­ed to cre­ate av­enues to add to this. All it took af­ter that was re­search, net­work­ing and mak­ing con­nec­tions on so­cial me­dia. With­in three days we had the re­sponse from Nicoli Mon­te­nar­ro, and that's when it re­al­ly kicked off."

The new fes­ti­val made link­ages with the co-founder of the Berlin Fash­ion Film Fes­ti­val, Nic­co­lo Mon­ta­nari, and the founders of the Tan­dem Move­ment in Bar­ba­dos, an ex­hi­bi­tion and de­sign space.

Those con­nec­tions, said Kennedy, went a long way in boost­ing the fes­ti­val's re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal. There will be rep­re­sen­ta­tion from both Tan­dem and Berlin at the fes­ti­val.

Mon­ta­nari is its head ju­ror. Oth­ers in­clude Nneka Luke, gen­er­al man­ag­er at the T&T Film Co; Mel Gabriel, ed­i­tor-in-chief at Caribbean Look­book; Con­rad Par­ris, ac­tor; San­dra Carr, se­nior in­struc­tor at the UTT Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign; jour­nal­ist Te­nille Clarke; and Is­rael Mapp of Tan­dem, Bar­ba­dos.

Luke said she was sure the fes­ti­val would be a wel­comed event in the east. She com­mend­ed Akim­bo for their fore­sight, not­ing that this coun­try in­deed has the cre­ativ­i­ty and more than enough as­pir­ing cre­atives to pro­pel the new fes­ti­val to­wards the stan­dards of those al­ready ex­ist­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.

Al­so speak­ing at the launch was Elize Ros­tant, di­rec­tor of T&T Bridge Ini­tia­tive and fes­ti­val co-or­di­na­tor of New Fire Fes­ti­val. Both fes­ti­vals are fo­cused on sus­tain­able en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism and are part­ners in the Caribbean Fash­ion and Arts Fea­ture Fes­ti­val.

The fes­ti­val aims to fos­ter more re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion, high­light work be­ing done in the fash­ion in­dus­try, cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for event tourism and con­tribute to the cur­rent ros­ter of film fes­ti­vals in T&T.

It will fea­ture fash­ion re­lat­ed doc­u­men­tary fea­tures and short films; there was a call for sub­mis­sions from per­sons ages 15- 25 and Foder­ing­ham said so far the call for sub­mis­sions was an­swered by del­e­gates from St Lu­cia, Haiti, Ja­maica and T&T.

Six oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals–Mex­i­co, Is­tan­bul, Medell�n, South Africa, Madrid and Cana­da–will be fea­tured at the Caribbean Fash­ion and Arts Fea­ture Fes­ti­val.

A call was made to sec­ondary schools in East Trinidad to sub­mit art­work for a joint ex­hi­bi­tion on this year's fes­ti­val theme, Afro Di­as­poric Link­ages and the Caribbean Voy­age. The Youth Ex­po, sched­uled for No­vem­ber 18, will al­so show­case the work of a num­ber of ex­ist­ing es­tab­lished lo­cal artists.

As the fes­ti­val's cre­ative hub, Akim­bo will func­tion as a venue for screen­ings, ex­hi­bi­tions, pan­els and af­ter­par­ties, said Kennedy.

Oth­er venues will in­clude pop­u­lar east­ern nightspots and the pic­turesque Philli­pa's Gar­den, a pri­vate res­i­dence in Ari­ma.