FILMCO Welcomes Its First Executive Director

The Filmmakers Collaborative of Trinidad & Tobago (FILMCO) welcomes Adeline Gregoire as its first executive director. Arts and cultural manager, founder of Women. Everywhere and co-founder and editor of Culturego Magazine, Adeline Gregoire brings a decade of experience in cultural administration, event management and international relations to the organisation.

Founded in January 2017, FILMCO is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a sustainable film industry in Trinidad & Tobago and the wider Caribbean through developing distribution models, strategic partnerships and programmes for professional development and capacity building.

According to FILMCO co-founder, filmmaker Mariel Brown,

“With our recent successes getting local content licensed for television broadcast by TTT Ltd, we feel a renewed sense of excitement at the scope of what FILMCO can achieve for its members and for the wider industry. We recognise that we need progressive, bright, hard-working people to help our organisation grow, and we’re delighted to have Adeline working with us to achieve our mandate.”

As she joins FILMCO, Ms. Gregoire will work towards helping establish the organisation as a key player in the regional film industry and beyond; to develop partnerships whereby, as she notes,

“local filmmakers and local content can be strategically placed to benefit from opportunities including professional development, distribution and collaboration which are vital for the expansion and dynamic growth of the industry.”

Speaking on her commitment to the creative sector and the Caribbean, Ms. Gregoire explains:

“very often, the Caribbean has been under- or mis-represented, even limited to a monolithic idea of identity… however this is where film as an art form holds its power. The moving image combined with sound, can tell stories in a unique and powerful way. When those stories are told by and about us, the effect is magnified, as this connects to our sense of worth and pride that we feel as Caribbean people.”

Ms Gregoire’s immediate priorities will be to grow FILMCO’s professional training and development programme, strengthen relationships with filmmakers in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean and build strategic regional and international partnerships.