Venue Case Studies

This inspired me to establish Thurrock Film Festival in 2018, originally called TIC Film Festival, TIC standing for Thurrock International Celebration. There had been a Thurrock International Film Festival previously but this had ceased to exist shortly after it was established. I had to rise to the challenge! In my bones, I felt that a film festival could pull together the different local communities by screening lesser-known narratives and to encourage inclusivity by doing so. But I had no experience of running a film festival. 

I tend, however, to dive into things without too much thought as I am a great believer in the abstract and the informal. The one thing I could count on with any assurance was the support of Mark Allinson, then Arts Manager of Thameside Theatre, our only local theatre which had a great film technician on the staff. Everything else was indeterminate. I have been a freelancer all my professional life. I was familiar with the undertaking of new projects without parameters, diving into the unknown. This factor of risk was what triggered survival, and it has, fortunately, more often than not, worked out for me. 

Having taken this step. I plunged into exploring all possibilities, trying this and that, discovering hands on what would or would not work, disregarding the dangers and pitfalls, meeting and listening to different communities, to absorb their zeitgeist, and, above all, to be ignited by what I was discovering. I seesawed between the daunting and the thrilling, all the time clinging tenaciously to the affirmative. 

After two years, with some actual experience of running a film festival under my belt, Covid struck – just as I was brimming with ideas I was itching to branch into. Enforced isolation followed but a whole new digital world opened up before me! I was now totally engrossed with the concept of extended reality.

Released from lockdown, I was anxious to race on. 2021 was a stop-start year for unlocking. We were all faced with unsettling brief moments of freedom and being unceremoniously dragged back into dispiriting detention. Mark Allinson had left. Still, I was determined to resurrect the festival in one of the brief moments of liberation. I was able to hold an open air cinema in Grays Town Park where I had the very generous support from Tina Holland, the Chair of Friends of Grays Town Park, at a time when grabbing hold of any friend one could find was a bonus! I rebranded the Festival to Thurrock Film Festival and screened four family outdoor features with heritage Bata shorts and an eclectic online offer. You can ascertain whether I was successful or not if you take a peek at our 2021 programme. 

Then unlocking truly swerved into action in 2022. At the Film Hub South East forum in April of that year, it was great to come together with FHSE members, officers and Essex Film Collective. At that event, I met and forged a great affinity with Anupma Shanker, a highly intelligent film curator who had worked with top flight film companies in India and who, much to my delight, agreed to join the Thurrock Film Festival team as Film Curator. She is an incredible support and stimulus. How fortunate was I to have found someone with whom I could converge with on so many cultural experiences. 

Then FHSE had a meeting with me to discuss helping me grow my team. I was a little cynical at first because such enticing considerations have been presented to me before. But blow me down! It turned out to be a proposition of considerable weight! FHSE acted upon their intention. And that gave me the fillip to forge ahead with my ideas!