ABOUT US
Along the north side of the Thames Thurrock lies. Origins of marsh and ague, where Dracula, Captain Kidd and Queen Elizabeth 1 forged myths. Where colonial subjects staggered ashore and braced themselves with Empire. Here, worlds first encountered each other, swept along by the tides of maritime travel. Secundum Tamesim Quovis Gentium. Spinning the matrix of fervent imagination born out of stories and images. Thus emerged Film Thurrock in 2018, an embryo of a film festival. Leapfrogging over Covid, this child of creativity began to flourish audaciously.
WHO WE ARE
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Creative Director of Film Thurrock
Hi Ching studied at the Royal Ballet School and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He began his career as a ballet dancer in companies that included Frankfurt Opera and Ballet Classique de Paris. He then became an actor as well as Artistic Director of projects such as Festival of Lights at the Royal National Theatre, the Handover of Hong Kong in the London Docklands and Silk Screens for the BBC produced across four UK cities simultaneously to mark the Beijing Olympics. He has won prizes for his writing and music compositions which have been featured on the BBC and in venues throughout Britain. He was Head of the Upper School at the Urdang Academy and Principal of Dance Theatre Academy for which he was approached by Bolshoi Ballet artist Sulamith Messerer to establish. He is a Founder Member of AAAHA which produces Film Thurrock. He established Thurrock Screen Culture Festival in 2018, formerly TIC / Thurrock Film Festival.
Email: hi.ching@filmthurrock.uk
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Co-Director, Thurrock Young Film Network
Alan Bright has made swift progress since being a volunteer with AAAHA in April 2022. Beginning as a runner, he quickly assumed a leading role in developing the Young Film Network. He acquired important technical and programming skills for this whilst organising Thurrock Film Club. In conjunction with upskilling himself, he has taken over marketing Film Thurrock on all social media outlets. A recent graduate of South Essex College, he impressively transferred his skills and knowledge in business, marketing, and teaching into a wide range of outcomes for Film Thurrock. He prides himself on his ability to adapt to change and, being a perfectionist at heart, pushes himself to the very limit to ensure successful results. He is a founding member of Film Thurrock.
Email: alan.bright@filmthurrock.uk
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Executive Festival Director of Thurrock International Film Festival
Jun Noh is a UK-based filmmaker, producer, and curator working across film, theatre, and multidisciplinary storytelling. A Leverhulme Arts Scholar and graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), he is founder of Liminal Views and co-founder of Kobold Blue Productions.
His work centres on independent cinema, curatorial practice, and supporting bold storytelling through both filmmaking and festival exhibition. Alongside his creative work, he is committed to championing emerging voices and fostering accessible spaces for film culture and dialogue.
Email: jun.noh@filmthurrock.uk
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Community Curator
Ollie Mills is a community and heritage professional based in Thurrock. He began his community work at the Purfleet Heritage and Military Centre (PHMC) in 2022, where he quickly progressed within the organisation to become an Executive Committee Member, Treasurer and Centre Coordinator. Now, also serving as a Director of the Anglo Asiatic Arts & Heritage Alliance (AAAHA), Ollie is successfully bridging the gap between AAAHA and the PHMC by fostering deep collaborations. This partnership was the driving force behind the WWII Salute festival in Purfleet, a major community initiative that salutes their rich heritage and the shared legacy of Thurrock and The Commonwealth nations.
Ollie’s expertise lies in making heritage accessible through community-led engagement. He previously spearheaded the Purfleet Community Gallery project, securing grant funding from START Thurrock to showcase student artwork through both physical and digital exhibitions. An accomplished public speaker and researcher, he has curated multimedia presentations for Grays Library using BFI archival footage and has actively participated in local oral history projects, preserving vital community narratives for the future. Additionally, he has helped create and manage film productions for AAAHA, further integrating visual media into local heritage storytelling.
Email: ollie.mills@filmthurrock.uk
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CHAT Coordinator
Based in Thurrock, Zak Gilmore (they/them) is a multi-faceted creative and graduate of the University of East London’s Computer Games Design: Story Development course. They are interested in a variety of creative fields aside from game design including writing, voice acting, and graphic design. They currently volunteer at Grays Library where they work to support members of the community with a variety of digital matters.
Zak is deeply sympathetic and a staunch advocate for the rights of marginalised/minority people, which has led to them heading Community Heritage Action Thurrock (CHAT), a group of diverse individuals from across Thurrock who can share their experiences and provide their unique perspectives and input on heritage projects.
Email: zak.gilmore@filmthurrock.uk
ASSOCIATE ARTISTS
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Often referred to as Asia’s answer to Andy Warhol, Ketna Patel is a highly prolific British-Indian mixed media POP Artist.
Her Art is colourful, global, multi cultural and brimming with energy, wit and valuable insights into our everyday world'
Having lived in Kenya, U.K, Singapore and India, she has been widely acclaimed for converting her Global insights into a compelling visual vocabulary that has injected a fresh counter expression to the predominantly western dominated narrative of world Art. Using different cultures and historical events, she juxtaposes mythological characters, Gods, Political icons and the common man on the same canvas. There is a fresh romance between the old and the new, breaking through stringent cultural, political, and class boundaries that have dominated the world for centuries.
'We are all storytellers.' - Ketna Patel
This colourful and confident visual language has been applied onto Art, Fashion, Furniture…..virtually on any surface imaginable! Her collaborations have ranged from Bollywood’s IIFA (International Indian Film Academy) and Hollywood’s Director Spike Lee to corporate giants like TATA, SONY & KIEHLS. Ketna’s artwork has been licensed to fashion companies, carpet houses, furniture makers, book and album covers, and regularly been donated for fund raising initiatives from UNICEF, Elephant Parade & AWARE and more. Patel has participated in talks, workshops and exhibitions worldwide, and her works continue to be collected and exhibited in numerous institutions and international private collections. Another important hallmark of her studio Practice is the ongoing investigation of the ever increasing Rural – Urban divide in both the UK and India, and how this can ultimately impact on our individual and collective ‘Identity’. In the last four years alone, Ketna has explored this phenomenon extensively in Wales (UK), Himachal Pradesh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh (India).
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an Wang Preston is a visual artist interested in landscape representation, identity, migration, and the environment. With photography as her primary medium, her solo, collaborative, and participatory projects employ still and moving images, sound, performance, installation, and the artist book to explore complex ideas from multiple angles.
Wang Preston’s practice is characterised by rigorous research processes led by her committed embodiment within the land to gain first-hand, skin-to-skin-like understanding. Her projects are demanding physically, intellectually, and emotionally. For her first major project, Mother River (2010–2014), she photographed the entire 6,211 km Yangtze River in China at precise 100 km intervals on a large-format plate camera. Such a monumental undertaking enabled her to provide a multilayered, vernacular view of contemporary China while subverting the existing hierarchies within the photographic representation of the Yangtze River since 1842. Her second project, Forest (2010–2017), investigated the complexities, hopes, and failures of constructed urban nature in China by following the adaptation journeys of transplanted old trees. Since 2020, Wang Preston has shifted her gaze from China to the UK, where she currently resides. With Love. From an Invader (2020–2021) saw her opening her research by walking to and photographing the same rhododendron bush on the South Pennine Moors every other day for an entire year. The project produced a four-panel audiovisual installation with a 38-minute soundtrack written by her collaborator, Monty Adkins, presenting visual and sonic ‘data’ in defence of the rhododendron habitat as part of Britain’s recombinant and cosmopolitan ecologies.
Wang Preston’s projects are internationally and critically acclaimed. She was the recipient of the inaugural RPS Award for Environmental Responsibility in 2023. She won 1st Prize in Professional Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards (2019); 1st Prize in Professional Commission, Syngenta Photography Prize (2017); and the Shiseido Photographer Prize at the Three Shadows Photography Annual Award in Beijing, China (2016). She was one of the Hundred Heroines awarded by the Royal Photographic Society in 2018.
Her solo exhibitions have been presented at leading public institutions such as the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK (2022); LOOK Photo Biennale, Liverpool, UK (2019); Xposure Photography Festival, UAE (2018); Photo Museum Ireland (2017); Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum (2015); and the Swatch Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Energy: Sparks from the Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum (2023–2024); The Time is Right, Jeddah Photo 2022; Ten by Ten at FotoFest, Houston, USA (2020); Sony World Photography Awards Touring Exhibition (2019); Forty Years of Contemporary Chinese Photography, OCAT Shenzhen, China (2018); and Dubai Photo (2016). Her first solo exhibition in London, Yan Wang Preston: With Love, was presented at Messums London in 2022.
Wang Preston has published two monographs: Mother River (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2018) and Forest (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2018). Her photographs and writing have been published in numerous newspapers and journals, such as The Guardian, Irish Times, Architecture Review, Asian Review, De Correspondent, Granta, and the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.
Her work is in numerous collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Portrait Gallery, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; National Trust Collections, UK; Wuhan Art Museum, China; Syngenta AG; and Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai and is held by private collectors worldwide.
Wang Preston was born in Henan Province in China in 1976, to a family of medical doctors. She gained her BSc in Clinical Medicine at Fudan University, Shanghai, in 1999 and subsequently qualified as a practising anaesthetist. She emigrated to the UK in 2005 and changed her career to photography. In 2009 she gained an MA in Visual Arts from Leeds Beckett University. In 2018 she was awarded a PhD in Photography by the University of Plymouth. Alongside her artistic career, she lectures at the University of Huddersfield. She lives in West Yorkshire, UK, with her husband and daughter.
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Bowen Tan has received several awards for his animated projects, which have been screened at prominent venues, including the Science Museum in London. He specialises in utilising VR technology to create animation projects for both non-profit and commercial purposes. He is Doctoral Tutor at the University of Sussex, Founder a/Programme Director of Tell Me Lemon and Co-organiser of XR Initiative.
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Finnian Treherne is a composer of experimental electroacoustic music including for film and games, based in Vienna, Austria. His work is deeply connected to nature, integrating field recordings, organic sounds, and acoustic instruments to create compelling soundscapes, working in REAPER.
Since 2022, Finnian has been studying ELAK at the mdw in Vienna. He also studied Media Composition at the VMI.
Finnian’s musical journey began in Tuscany, Italy, where his mixed cultural heritage (British, Czech, and German) and upbringing fostered an early appreciation for music. He played instruments such as piano, cello, accordion, and guitar.
Since 2012, Finnian has been based in Austria, where he studies at the mdw ELAK (electroacoustic and experimental music) program. His studies blend electroacoustic and experimental elements with classical and orchestral traditions. Born in 2002, Finnian’s early life in Italy, surrounded by its history and culture, also deeply influenced his artistic development.
Finnian began with the cello at the Hans Werner Henze Institute at a young age, later focusing on the piano. At nine, he received a field recorder, sparking an interest in sound that would later shape his studies. While exploring instruments like the accordion and guitar, Finnian sought a more complete form of self-expression. In 2015, he attended the Ikult Lab Raabs/Thaya summer camp, where he discovered digital audio workstations (DAWs) and the possibilities of computer music production.
FILM THURROCK is produced by
