Access to wider audiences has long been an obstacle for filmmakers in Trinidad and Tobago (TT) and the Caribbean. Now, the Filmmakers Collaborative of TT (Filmco) has teamed up with the newly launched Pavilion+ streaming platform to make Caribbean movies and TV shows more accessible to viewers in the Caribbean diaspora in the US, UK and Canada.
A partnership with the Roku streaming platform means Filmco content will also be available on this platform.
Audiences across the Caribbean diaspora and viewers with keen interests in the Caribbean can enjoy Filmco’s expansive catalogue and slate of original films on the Pavilion+ platform for free. Filmco is a distribution platform designed to give filmmakers in TT and the wider Caribbean who are part of the Filmco collaborative the opportunity to monetize their content through licensing and distribution.
The strong and vibrant membership organisation’s core areas of focus are the distribution of films and television series, management of the annual TT film festival (ttFF), and industry-specific professional development and training.
Pavilion+ from Pavilion Entertainment offers the best Caribbean TV, movies, and documentaries streaming on The Roku Channel, giving users the opportunity to discover and enjoy exclusively Caribbean content for free.
Filmco’s co-founder Mariel Brown said, “For many Caribbean filmmakers and television producers, gaining access to audiences is a crucial but often missing link in their work’s value chain. Our growing partnership with Pavilion is helping to connect all the pieces of the chain, and we’re excited to expand the appetite for and access to Caribbean content with Pavilion, while building more sustainable livelihoods for our stakeholders.”
Speaking to Sunday Newsday via e-mail, Brown said the partnership with Pavilion and Roku came about through a collaboration with Pavilion’s founder, Gian Franco.
“We have been working with Pavilion's founder, Gian Franco, since 2020 to bring Caribbean movies and TV shows to Roku. The Roku relationship is Gian's and he shares our passion for Caribbean films. The Pavilion partnership is one in our growing distribution offering.”
She said having access to online platforms gives Filmco an advantage in today’s digital world.
“The internet and online platforms have fundamentally changed the way many people view and engage with movies and TV shows. While many established distributors have been struggling to make the switch, at Filmco we embrace the kind of access to audiences that the online space can potentially offer over traditional broadcasters. Certainly, there is a lot more flexibility in the online space than there is with the traditional broadcasters, and that adaptability is important for us as a young distributor. Now that we're finding ways to have Caribbean content on these platforms, it's massively important that we promote and market the availability. We can't just expect that audiences will come.”
She said the titles being offered on the Roku platform were chosen to bring at
