The T&T Film Com­pa­ny (TTFC) plans on mak­ing lo­cal­ly-made movies and short-films a more promi­nent part of T&T's en­ter­tain­ment menu.At the me­dia launch for its newest com­pe­ti­tion–the T&T Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val–CEO of the com­pa­ny Car­la Foder­ing­ham said it was time for lo­cal con­tent to be used by var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, in­stead of for­eign ma­te­r­i­al.

"We are in dis­cus­sion right now with the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T about car­ry­ing lo­cal con­tent on the fer­ry to To­ba­go," she said dur­ing Fri­day's func­tion at Ross­co's in Port-of-Spain.She joked about see­ing one for­eign-made chil­dren's car­toon in par­tic­u­lar every time she took the fer­ry, adding, "We need to see our­selves on tele­vi­sion, on all screens, on all plat­forms, wher­ev­er."She said the com­pa­ny was al­so en­gag­ing the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) about get­ting lo­cal­ly-made films shown on its bus­es.

"Why not, guys? Why not?" she asked.Foder­ing­ham al­so said it was time for com­pa­nies like Caribbean Air­lines to "get with the pro­gramme.""This is a na­tion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ty. We're go­ing to spread the wealth across a wider range of peo­ple, a greater ex­panse in terms of pop­u­la­tion, and we need to start see­ing films that look like us. Peo­ple like us. Our sto­ries. We need to get them out there."

Part of this dri­ve in­cludes em­pow­er­ing young film­mak­ers to shoot and ed­it lo­cal con­tent, and for any­one with a smart­phone and a pen­chant for mak­ing mi­ni-movies, the TTFC's newest ini­tia­tive is of­fer­ing a plat­form for those cin­e­mat­ic as­pi­ra­tions to come to life.The Smart­phone Film Fes­ti­val in­vites all lo­cals to get cre­ative with the video fea­ture on their An­droids, iPhones and Black­ber­ries, by film­ing a mi­ni-movie, no longer than five min­utes.

It's a com­pet­i­tive fes­ti­val for short films, seek­ing to en­cour­age the cre­ation of re­spon­si­ble lo­cal con­tent and show bud­ding film­mak­ers it's not nec­es­sary to have high-tech equip­ment to make a qual­i­ty prod­uct."We do not need to have deep pock­ets," Foder­ing­ham said.The com­pe­ti­tion will al­so chal­lenge sea­soned film­mak­ers to work with­in that time con­straint and ex­plore oth­er types of video tech­nol­o­gy.

"Es­sen­tial­ly this is open to all ages, and it will fo­cus on the cul­ture, the iden­ti­ty, the sto­ries of T&T," Foder­ing­ham said.Do­minic Koo, a re­cent Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) grad­u­ate with a de­gree in film, pre­sent­ed his one-minute movie Missed Call, say­ing he had to bor­row an iPhone from his friend to make it hap­pen."It's quite easy re­al­ly. You just have to know how to op­er­ate the tech­nol­o­gy. So in a sense, the fo­cus comes more on the con­tent of the film," he said.

"We are a coun­try that has its own iden­ti­ty," said the 25-year-old, lament­ing that the in­abil­i­ty to show­case that to the rest of the world was shame­ful.He said while fel­low film­mak­ers sought out fame and suc­cess, they were al­so dri­ven by do­ing some­thing mean­ing­ful."I think this gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple al­so look for mean­ing and self-ex­pres­sion in what they do. It's not enough just to get paid...They want to find some­thing that's ful­fill­ing and that they be­lieve in."

He said this was at­tain­able, even with a smart­phone, even it was bor­rowed. "With a cou­ple friends, you bor­row a phone from some­body, you have a good idea, and you know, you have a film. That's it."

More in­fo:

De­tails of com­pe­ti­tion:

�2 Must use a smart­phone or tablet to film footage of movie

�2 Mul­ti­ple smart­phones or tablets may be used

�2 Use of edit­ing soft­ware is per­mit­ted

�2 Films must not ex­ceed five min­utes in length, in­clud­ing cred­its

�2 Can be sub­mit­ted by a group or in­di­vid­ual

�2 Film must be suit­able for all ages

�2 Sub­mis­sion dead­line is March 2014.