Benjamin Cook is the founder director of LUX, the UK agency for the support and promotion of artists’ working with the moving image. He has been professionally involved in independent film sector in the UK for the past 20 years as a curator, archivist, producer, writer and lecturer. Before founding LUX he held a number of positions including Director of the Lux Centre; Head of Distribution of London Electronic Arts; Director of the London Pan-Asian Film Festival; Avant-Garde Programmer for the National Film Theatre, Film Archivist for Anthology Film Archives, New York, the Northern Film Archive, Gateshead and the Wellcome Institute.
He holds a MA in Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism from Sheffield Hallam University. He has taught and spoken widely in the UK and internationally on artists’ moving image and three years ago co-founded a research masters in moving image art with Central Saint Martins and a Leverhulme Trust-supported post-academic programme for artists working with the moving image which he has run for the past six years. He has produced numerous films by international artists including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Yang Fudong, Amar Kanwar, Deimantas Narkevicius and Akram Zaatari.
He has curated numerous exhibitions and screening series, most recently the ‘Mindaugas Triennial’, the 10th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Vilnius in 2012, also in 2012 he founded the LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images London and is the co-programmer of the Experimenta section of the BFI London Film Festival. As well as writing for periodicals such as Sight and Sound he founded his own LUX imprint in 2004 and has so far edited and published 16 publications including the Animate! Book, rethinking animation (2005), Subjects and Sequences, A Margaret Tait Reader (2006), The Films of Stefan and Franciska Themerson (2007), Rewind+Play. An Anthology of Early British Video Art (2009). He is currently an External Examiner for Kingston University, Chairman of The Elephant Trust and a Founder Director of the Independent Cinema Office and Animate Projects.