Local movies can rake in B$

He was speaking with Sunday Newsday on the state of film. He said that from 2005 to 2015 it has been an critical period in terms of consolidating film infrastructure, especially during a time when we had considerable money from oil and gas. He pointed out that the Trinidad and Tobago Film Company, Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and the UWI Film Programme all had their genesis around 2005 and 2006.

“People talking forever about developing a film. We need to talk about developing a film culture as well.” He said it was about getting people exposed to a broader diet besides Hollywood fare and expressed hope that people would try films from all over the world and this would perfectly match this country’s pluralism.

“We are a world within a world.” The country would move from being just consumers of motion pictures, he said, to producing our own on a regular basis, adding that by accident or design, we did begin to develop a film culture in the last decade.

“Seeing local films becomes normal.

That was the goal.” He pointed out that now more than ever it has become a normal part of some people’s lives to make films.

“The concern for me is that now that we found love (started making films) what are we gonna do with it?” he asked rhetorically.

THE KESHORN WALCOTT OF FILM Ramesar said we need to look at the nature of the culture and film in Trinidad and Tobago, which should be a subset of the overall culture. He added, however, there is a culture in this country where we do not distribute opportunity fairly among all citizens.

Apart from not producing an equitable system, he said, we are also not able to get the best work done.

He noted that there are complaints all the time from the “have nots” who felt that they did not have fair access to opportunities to make films. These, he said, seem to be working class people who are outside the centre of things. “People say openly they are not given a fair share (when it comes to) grants for their work (and they) felt like outside children.” Ramesar recalled that when he was chairman of the TT Film Company from 2014 to 2015 he felt that more voices needed to be heard and visions seen.

He remembered during a visit to Brasil for the 2012 Olympics a homeless man recognised his TT scarf and gesticulated like he was throwing a javelin, a reference to Olympic gold medal winner Keshorn Walcott.

“I said (to myself) Keshorn Walcott is from Toco and I felt...the next great film talent (could) come from anywhere in Trinidad and Tobago.” From Charlotteville, Rio Claro or Cascade. “My view was to mine talent, (and to) find talent in the small population we have to spread the net as wide as possible.” Ramesar said that it was not just about fairness, but practicality as the more people you “audition” the better chance of finding talent.

“If people complain that opportunity is concentrated in a small group and geographical space then we need to examine that. It meant that the next Keshorn Walcott of cinema is out there and it is a real sin not to have looked for them, found them and given them a chance.” He said that he never wanted film in this country to become something elite. He added that there was a time making a film was financially prohibitive but with technology like Digital SL R cameras it was more accessible. He also pointed out that with Government Assistance for Tuition Expenses programme more people could study film, including at the UWI Film Programme.

Ramesar has seen film-makers with very humble resources produce films on their own, like Jeffrey Allen with his 2014 crime drama Welcome to Warlock, Roger Alexis with his 2012 puppet comedy I’m Santana: the Movie and Nicholas Attin with his three features Little Boy Blue (2011), Escape from Babylon (2013) and Tomb (2016).

He said there were many more examples and there was a “mini-revolution” taking place. He also said there is a lot of “community cinema” with about half a dozen feature films coming out similar to Welcome to Warlock.

He said that to date the film industry has not produced a net profit to taxpayers and this was because of a lot of “unforced errors”.

“Going into film I can’t say we harnessed the best minds and human resources but chased a lot of shadows which were (from) external models.” He highlighted that we did not get the economies of scale right and we also tried to graft from outside without taking into consideration our own indigenous culture.

Ramesar said he would have preferred that we seed scores of films with micro budgets and have “all lines in the water” rather than concentrate a lot of money in relatively few productions.

He explained that around 2013 he expected that the energy boom would begin coming to an end and he had a sense of urgency to transform the industry and push for diversification both within film and generally in the economy.

He said that regional and international audiences are drawn to films like Warlock and Santana because they “seem to carry greater authenticity than the conservative, orthodox films being made.” Ramesar explained that through his own efforts he tried to transform the industry and culture radically and suddenly but people resisted.

He lamented that we are stuck with very little capital to invest in film. He expressed hope, however, that we will have 20 features per year and each month one or two in the multiplex, and that they can appear on cable or streaming sites like Netflix.

He said that people are noticing a wave of films coming from this country and that something is happening here.

DRAWING ON MUSIC AND CULTURE Film usually follows music, and since this country has such a strong music industry Ramesar said we need to “pump” soundtracks and unify music and films.

On the bright side, TT has a lot of talent coming up apart from the students at the UWI Film Programme, who have consistently copped awards at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and gone on to other various festivals.

On the negative side, though, he suspected that the industry was operating without much research and is “data poor”, and he stressed the need to take calculated risks.

Asked about the role Government has to play in developing the industry, Ramesar said to support film the State would have to redirect funds from one area to another.

He stressed, however, that cultural industries is one of the fastest growing in the world. Ramesar, whose latest film Last Dance of the Karaoke King was being shot in India and Trinidad, lamented that it was difficult to get a film made here. This, he opined, needed to be incentivised, as without it we could see a brain drain of talent.

On a positive note he was excited by the talent he was seeing on the horizon and said we can make authentic films about ourselves and make money doing it, as one actually followed the other.

He compared the local film industry to Carnival bands and questioned whether we had become so generic that “we are producing a cinematic pretty mas”.

“We are in danger of doing that.” He said instead we need to pull from our past and our traditions of storytelling, folklore and rich cultural heritage.

He stressed that in local film industry there are still divisions of class, race, gender and age and “a house divided cannot stand”. He said the small group needs to come together and not get into cliques and special interest pockets.

“We need to get our act together and bury the hatchet. If we don’t do that we will not have a film industry.”