TT film company is long overdue

The idea of a Trinidad and Tobago Film Company is long overdue. Earlier this week, a steering committee set up by the government handed in its recommendations. Many of these have to do with facilitating foreign film companies, so that more of them will choose Trinidad and Tobago as locations. But the proposed TTFC is also supposed to nurture the development of a local film industry. The economic returns on a film industry are twofold. First, there is the revenue generated by the film itself; second, there are the publicity benefits for the country, which translate into increased tourist revenues. But these benefits can accrue only if we attract big-budget film-makers and if local films can find a significant audience overseas.

In such a venture, government involvement is a prerequisite. Movies require huge investments, and in our small economy there are simply not enough private organisations or individuals willing to take such a risk. While the CCN Group has made ventures into a television soap opera and a short movie, these efforts have had limited success. However, if the TTFC is to achieve these goals, there must be significant private sector involvement in it. After all, it is simply a fact of life that governments are not efficient at handling even straightforward business ventures. But this ineffectuality is increased when the venture has a high creative input. When it comes to attracting and facilitating foreign film companies, the government may be reasonably efficient. Indeed, a Film Desk has long existed within the Tourism and Industrial Development Company (TIDCO), which did exactly this.

That Film Desk was also supposed to foster local films but, despite preliminary discussions with various interest groups, nothing concrete ever materialised. The danger is, the TTFC may just turn out to be a larger, bigger-budget version of that self-same Film Desk. The core difficulty here is that movie-making is a most uncertain industry. Even Hollywood film studios, with decades of experience and huge budgets, do not know what will make a film a hit or not. So the question, what can a fledgling TTFC bring to the table? The answer is, not much — especially if it is led by government bureaucrats and bottom-line businessmen. Such a venture must involve creative persons — writers, cinematographers, directors.

And we don’t have many of those, and none with any significant experience in even medium-budget movie-making. But the point is, in this kind of venture, such persons must be allowed creative licence. And that will be difficult, given the habit we have of giving lip service, but no real power or money, to our creative artists. Yet the fact is, there never has been a better time internationally for Trinidad and Tobago to nurture a film industry. Over the past few years, independent and relatively low-budget American films have been huge successes.

These, generally, have been films which rely on good scripts and innovative direction, not fancy special effects and huge sets — which aren’t even on the table for us, anyway. Creatively speaking, there is no reason why we cannot make such films. But there has to be a well-conceived plan to find and train talented individuals, so they will acquire the necessary technical know-how to back up their creativity. And then the powers-that-be must trust these persons to do what they do best, even with the expectation that, before they even make a few sure steps, there will be a lot of falling down.