Run by the non-profit filmmakers collaborative, FILMCO, the trinidad+tobago film festival (ttff) celebrates films from and about the Caribbean and its diaspora, as well as from world cinema, through an annual festival and year-round screenings. In addition, the ttff seeks to facilitate the growth of Caribbean cinema by offering a wide-ranging industry programme and networking opportunities.
Since its humble beginnings at the then Deluxe Cinema in Port of Spain, the trinidad+tobago film festival has become a mainstay of Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural calendar, and is well-established as the premiere film festival of the English-speaking Caribbean. Screening – on average – 110 films over seven days to sold out audiences, ttff proves that Caribbean films are a dynamic and all-encompassing expression of what it is to be from this place, in this moment.
Objectives
- Cultivate and grow the global competitiveness of Trinidad and Tobago film through screening local films and enabling filmmakers to receive audience feedback at Q&A sessions and from discussions with fellow filmmakers
- Leverage ttff’s position as a unique product (a niche film festival focused on promoting Caribbean content in a developing film industry) to distinguish itself in the international market
- Provide training opportunities to T&T’s producers and directors through organising face-to-face meetings and workshops with international and regional film industry professionals; to develop skills training and industry acumen so that they may successfully engage with industry professionals for finance, distribution, sales and coproduction activities
- Train filmmakers to better equip themselves to pitch their projects to industry professionals during the ttff’s biannual Caribbean Film Mart
- Invite internationally recognised film industry professionals to T&T as trainers and introduce them to T&T as a unique film location with incentives and trained crews and then they become brand ambassadors who can promote these benefits internationally
- Nurture collaboration and strengthen capacity of T&T film professionals through interaction with local, regional and international filmmakers and experts in the field
- Support the government’s initiatives to diversify the economy through the development of the film industry as a viable economic sector that has the possibility of yielding significant returns
- Enable competitiveness in the creative sector internationally through the strengthened sustainability of ttff
- Increase the value of the ttff as a product by increasing the quality and diversity of the films it screens; promote brand ttff to visiting industry professionals and filmmakers, who can then promote ttff and by extension, T&T, in the international film industry
- Develop partnerships with regional and international film festivals to facilitate the screening of an increasing number of T&T and Caribbean films and act as festival ambassadors using strategy and goal-setting to leverage attendance at specifically-selected international film festivals to find opportunities, promote brand ttff and T&T filmmakers and their films and increase our family of supporters all over the world
