Ben Walters

Ben Walters is cabaret editor of Time Out London and creator of BURN, the platform for moving images by cabaret artists.
As a documentary-maker, Ben co-directed the feature This Is Not a Dream (2012), a history of queer and alternative moving-image work since Warhol (co-directed with Gavin Butt) that has screened in London, New York, Los Angeles, Dublin, Copenhagen and beyond; and the short Vinegar to Jam (2013), about the last days of Bistrotheque's cabaret room (co-directed with Edward Lawrenson).
As Time Out London’s cabaret editor since 2009, Ben is particularly interested in the collaboration between performers and audience on which cabaret depends. He chaired the jury for the inaugural London Cabaret Awards and helped create TO&ST, the Time Out & Soho Theatre Edinburgh Cabaret Award, both in 2012. In 2010, Ben created BURN, which has showcased film, video and video-interactive live work by many of London’s leading cabaret artists and been part of the programme at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, the Hot August Fringe and other festivals and events.
As a film and television critic, Ben has written books about Orson Welles, The Office (BFI TV Classics) and, with JM Tyree, The Big Lebowski (BFI Film Classics). He has also programmed seasons on Bernard Herrmann and the Coen brothers for the National Film Theatre and presented research on Orson Welles’s television work to the Film and Education Research Academy at Columbia University, New York. He remains a regular contributor to Film Quarterly, Sight & Sound, the Guardian, BBC Radio and Time Out, where he was deputy film editor from 2005 to 2007. While based in New York from 2007 to 2009, Ben wrote about the work of the Kuchar brothers, Kenneth Anger, John Waters, Quentin Crisp and Penny Arcade, as well as Joe E Jeffreys’ Drag Show Video Vérité archival project.