AFTER applying for a Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports’ Culture and Creative Arts Industry grant and acquiring it, Deodat Persaud used the funding to create a mini-festival of locally made films in Berbice.

“I have been amazed by the content that we see coming out from at least Tik Tok and I felt that there is that potential for us to be able to create short films. I mean, many countries have been big on this here and I think that it is one of those areas our young people should embrace and hence I’ve thought of this film festival,” Persaud said.

He stated that when he saw the ministry’s grant being offered, he was happy to have applied and succeeded. He related that there are hardly any short films and he felt like the Berbice Film Festival was a start for Guyana to populate the virtual world with its own content.

“Hence, we have had very nice thematic areas to promote things about Guyana, we want to hear Guyanese stories and this was the idea behind this film festival,” Persaud said.

As the concept is very new, he said, noting that there is not much buy-in of the films but the grant has allowed for the establishment an infrastructure.

“While this is our first Berbice Film Festival, as I call it, it is going to pave way for more film festivals to come. And we want to make this an annual feature so it doesn’t stop here. What we plan to do is to work with these filmmakers and take them because they’re all amateurs in their own regards, but what we want to do is to work with them to be able to polish their skills, so we can be able to start producing more and more content online,” Persaud said.