Personal profile
Biography
Ben Slater is a writer, editor and curator with considerable experience working across various creative fields, including film production, theatre, performance, publications and digital and audio art.
His writings on film have appeared in many publications including Screen International and Cahiers du Cinema (World Cinema Editions). He’s authored chapters on film in several books, was an editor of the National Museum of Singapore's film journal Cinematheque Quarterly, edited 25: Histories and Memories of the Singapore International Film Festival (2014), and is the author of Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore (2006), the definitive account of the film Saint Jack (1979), directed by Peter Bogdanovich. He also produced two documentaries and a commentary track for the US and French editions of the Saint Jack Blu-ray disc in 2017 and 2018.
Ben continues to research American and European films made in Singapore, and curated a 10 film season on this theme for NUS Museum in 2015, a day-long event as part of the Asia House Film Festival, London in 2016, and Singaporeana! for the Asian Film Archives in 2019, which included a day-long academic symposium. He is the co-curator of Cinema Reclaimed, a film season which has been part of the National Heritage Board of Singapore's annual festival since 2020.
He's credited Script Editor on the award-winning feature film Helen (2008), Mister John (2013) and the highly acclaimed Rose Plays Julie (2019), all directed by Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy (he also was a reader/advisor on their latest film Baltimore (2023)), and was Script Consultant on Ho Tzu Nyen's HERE (2009), which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight during the Cannes Film Festival.
Ben wrote the script for the short film The Legend of the Impacts (2012) which premiered at the Southeast Asian Film Festival, and co-wrote the screenplay for the feature film Camera (2014) with director James Leong, premiering at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival in competition. Ben's first sole-authored feature screenplay, the 'tropical noir' MALAM, premiered at the Jaffna International Cinema Festival, and had a release in Singapore at The Projector at 2021, and UK screenings in 2022 (including at the BFI Southbank). Most recently, he is the co-writer of COME CLOSER (2023), a TV series directed by K Rajagopal and produced by Akanga FIlms, which is streaming in Singapore. As a teacher of screenwriting and storytelling, he's interested in screenwriting methodologies and pedagogies.
He's the co-director (with Sherman Ong) of Tony's Long March, a 40 minute documentary portrait of the late Singaporean film producer Tony Yeow, which premiered at the the Singapore International Film Festival in 2015, and screened at the National Museum of Singapore, Singapore's National Library and The Arts House. He's also the director of a 60-second film for The Film That Buys The Cinema (2014), alongside Peter Strickland, Nicholas Roeg, and many more, which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival before touring Europe.
In 2016, Ben edited the inaugural issue of NANG magazine, dedicated to Screenwriting in Asia, through interviews with leading screenwriters in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, Iran, Indonesia, and more. He also conceived and co-edited a special online edition of NANG inspired by the memory of Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc which was described by critic Adrian Martin as “one of the best publishing ideas I’ve seen in years.”
As a practitioner in contemporary theatre and performance in the UK and Singapore, Ben's co-created several site-specific audio works (Desire Paths in 2003 and Ghostwalking in 2010), most recently Under The Five Trees (2019), commissioned by the National Gallery of Singapore. He consulted on the redesign of the National Museum of Singapore's History Gallery in 2005-6, and authored the Childrens' Audio Guide in 2009. His short stories have been published in Fish Eats Lion (Math Paper Press, 2012), Lontar #3 (Epigram, 2014) and Ellipsis (2021).
Ben is also an accomplished publications editor, starting in the mid-1990s when he co-founded arts magazine Entropy, which is due to be re-published. He was the editor of the first Singapore Biennale guidebook and catalogue in 2006 and 2008, working under curator Fumio Nanjo.
Between 2019 and 2022 Ben was the Associate Chair of Students in ADM (the first to have that role) during the period of the COVID pandemic. He believes that providing effective, clear and empathetic support for student wellbeing is critical for any educational institute.
Currently, Ben is undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing in the School of Humanities at NTU entitled LOST CINEMA