Pushing region’s film-makers

BARBADOS IS SET  to become the home  of the first film distribution company  in the English-speaking Caribbean. Last Wednesday, CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution Inc. was launched to present Caribbean film-makers  to the international community.CaribbeanTales was established to ensure  that film-makers in the Caribbean could effectively have their work marketed and distributed. Independent film producers have no centralised channel through which to market content, and content buyers have no centralised entity from which to acquire content.  Frances-Anne Solomon, chief executive officer  of CaribbeanTales, said: “There is an explosion  of products coming out  of the region and there  is a need for a focused distribution strategy to ensure that this content gets the best deals on the international market.”Solomon emphasised the danger in not having avenues available for products indigenous to the Caribbean, where film review personnel might decide the work has no audience without taking time to invest in the product or understand  the target market.CaribbeanTales’ chairman Dr Keith Nurse, who is also director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, said the biggest challenge was that throughout the Caribbean there was the generation of content but no outlets for getting this content into the markets.Nurse said the creation of a company that could distribute Caribbean films was important, since  film-makers currently relied on people outside  of the region to distribute their work. This, he said, caused the money to stay outside of the region as the most money could be made through distribution  and marketing.  (LK)