Education officials held informal discussions yesterday over the prospects of a film course being offered at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Five Islands campus with a renowned film producer who donated US $100,000 to the campus.
Andrea Iervolino, whose Iervolino and Lady Bacardi Entertainment (ILBE) company has produced feature films such as Bobby Moresco’s “Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend”, visited the UWI Five Island campus on the request of Dario Item, the ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to Spain, to the Principality of Monaco, the Principality of Liechtenstein, and to the World Tourism Organization in the United Nations (UNWTO).
In 2022, Iervolino was tasked by Ambassador Item with evaluating potential entertainment investment opportunities in the in the Caribbean, with a focus on Antigua and Barbuda.
UWI Principal Professor Justin Robinson expressed gratitude for the donation as he explained to the film producer that the institution continues to look for its own unique selling point.
“One of the areas we are thinking about, which is not strong in the UWI system, is the whole film industry, and one of the things that is really occupying my mind is that in the Caribbean, we have low access to tertiary education, but it is unbelievably low for males … so I’m always looking for programming activities that might appeal to them,” he said.
The donated funds were earmarked for supporting the school’s day-to-day activities and Iervolino expressed his desire to cultivate an enduring connection with the university.
He suggested that once the university begins to offer film courses to its students, he would be willing to visit “three or four times a year to do teaching of the programme”.
Both the UWI principal and the entertainment industry mogul spoke informally about the prospects of such a programme, including suggesting the idea of creating an internship as part of this programme.
Minister of Education Daryll Matthew probed the entertainment mogul on the prospect of digital animation education.
However, Iervolino said that starting an animation course will require not only a serious structure be put in place, but a large investment in computers and software capable of teaching students the techniques of animation.
“So, you need a big investment in infrastructure. Now what I can do, I can have this student to come in Serbia, to come in Italy, to go in India to work in the office,” he said.
He described the scale of investment as being in the “millions”.
“So, my point is maybe what they can learn here, they can learn only one part of that storyboarding, design, but when you go to actual animation, you need a very big IT infrastructure,” he explained.