Third Horizon Film Festival Think Tank - Facilitator (2024)

Third Horizon is dedicated to developing, producing, exhibiting and distributing film and other
art forms that give voice to stories of the Caribbean, its diaspora and other marginalized and
underrepresented spaces in the Global South.

The Caribbean is home to a trove of stories that remain untold given film’s prohibitively
expensive tools, financing, and training, exacerbated by a colonial legacy of racialized political,
economic, and cultural inequalities as well as brain drain. The inequity of investment in
Caribbean voices reflects in the director’s chairs behind top-grossing films. Across the 1,300
most popular box-office films from 2007–2019, underrepresented races and ethnicities directed
just 12.6% of mainstream films with women of color comprising a marginal 1% directors.
Meanwhile, white men helmed over 82% of top directing jobs.

No enduring, long-term process currently exists for cultivating Caribbean filmmakers and
advancing the equitable participation of Caribbean voices in the global cultural systems that
shape our lives. Third Horizon remedies this on the ground floor. As a vertically-integrated,
grassroots organization led by Caribbean artists, Third Horizon is uniquely able to incubate
emerging Caribbean filmmakers from start to finish, nurturing them first through creative
development and content-production programs, then providing multi-platform distribution
through the Third Horizon film festival, partner screenings, their platform Studio Anansi, and
live events, while simultaneously creating access to career opportunities throughout our global
network of press, institutions, and industry gatekeepers.

Although Caribbean filmmakers share a regional home, they hail from many different islands
and nations. For this reason Third Horizon frames its collaborative work as building bridges, be it
between Caribbean filmmakers divided by ocean or Caribbean filmmakers and the resources
and exhibition opportunities they might not connect with otherwise. To develop a regenerative,
equitable ecosystem for Caribbean filmmaking and arts that equips underrepresented voices
with the resources to tell and exhibit their stories at the highest level, we wish to prioritize
working with regional partners across the Caribbean that support the highest standards in arts
exhibition. Headquartered in Miami, it is crucial that Third Horizon works with trusted
institutions based in the region and across the diaspora.

The Third Horizon Caribbean Film Industry Think Tank (THCFITT) will intentionally build on the

groundbreaking work of Third Horizon in its efforts to unite, build bridges and renew the many
ties that have existed in the pan-Caribbean cultural space with filmmakers, and extend our
reach to institutions. Our region is at a juncture in which many recent trends, developments and
shifts both in the Caribbean and the Global South – as well as a recent upturn in the visibility
and mobility of Caribbean cinema and film creatives- make it the ideal time to convene
stakeholders of the Caribbean screen sector, in order to conduct a cartography of the status
quo, trends, perspectives, challenges, needs and future perspectives and to ideate solutions
relating to film finance, production, distribution and exhibition.

As such, THCFITT will convene Caribbean film professionals, organization representatives, and
stakeholders over 3 days to form community, build trust, conduct a cartography of their current
situation, share experiences and best practices and ideate around the following topics:

● Distribution and circulation of Caribbean cinema in the Caribbean and its diasporas;
● Investment and funding;
● Talent development;
● Growing documentary filmmaking and culture;
● Collaborations with Africa and the rest of the Global South.

The think tank will comprise several topic-specific conversations, which would include break-out
rooms to discuss the more specific aspects of the main topics. As building trust and
community-building are also key objectives of the think tank in order that it has a positive
structural effect on the sector beyond the event, the think tank would also involve plenary
sessions in which the results of the conversations are shared with the group, unpacked and
potentially further developed.

Third Horizon Film Festival Think Tank Welcome Pack 2024