Film Industry: 1st step to its development in St-Martin

The president Aline Hanson and Jean-Pierre Spilbauer, Mayor of Bry Sur Marne (Val de Marne), signed a twinning oath in the meeting room of the Collectivité hall on Saturday, October 15 in the morning. The third edition of the Francophone Film Festival (1989), filming of Speed 2 (1996) as well as several series including Les Vacances de l’Amour or La Baie des Flamboyants (1996-2013)… "In about twenty years, Saint-Martin has acquired a certain experience in accommodating the film industry. Since then, requests for film shooting permits are more and more numerous and it has become necessary to organize the sector and offer a complete service" said the President of the Collectivité. Up to now, every production has imported its entire film crew. The idea is therefore to train the young people in Saint-Martin, of whom 33% are unemployed, to the different cinema careers in order to develop the film industry on the island and therefore the territory’s economy.

Thanks to the twinning oath, the young people of Saint-Martin will have the opportunity to train here on the island as well as in Bry Sur Marne, where they will also be able to be accommodated. The city has many strengths and in particular, welcomes the best studios of French cinema (former studios of the SFP since the 70s) which were due to shut down a few years ago but have found a second life since the company Transpalux, specialized in leasing cinema equipment, has decided to take over. That’s why Didier Diaz, CEO of the Transpa Group, and Pascal Bécu, Director of Bry studios, Jean-François Pigne, head of the fiction division of France Television, as well as Leslie Pierre, President of the representatives  association for the Association for the development of employment and training for careers in the audiovisual and digital sector in Overseas (AFMAN) were present as partners in this twinning project.

It has already been several years that Pierre Brangé and Philippe Millon, respectively, cabinet director and director general of services at the Collectivité have been fostering the hope to turn Saint-Martin into a Caribbean Hollywood. In 2013, Franck Mirre, based in Paris, filmed the teaser of the Snipe series and then offered the President of the Collectivité to create a film school for the young people of Saint-Martin. He then met the abovementioned stakeholders from Bry and created the AFMAN.

Since then, the Collectivité has signed an agreement with this association in order to conduct a feasibility study on the creation of a filming office and a cinema school in French Quarter. This initiative was announced in December 2015, when the city contract was implemented. In concrete terms, before talking about training, a need must be created and therefore it is necessary to convince different production companies to come film in Saint-Martin and while at the same time developing accommodation structures. The project includes three parts including the creation of a filming office and a studio in French Quarter and then the deployment of training programs within a school for cinema careers here on the island: carpentry/word, makeup, seamstress, costume designer, make-up artist/hairdresser, Boom Operator (light), sound, etc. as well as in Bry sur Marne: scenic and video editing, director, scriptwriter, etc.