Ben Lewis

Ben Lewis is an award-winning documentary film-maker, author and art critic, whose films are invariably commissioned by the BBC, Arte and a long list of broadcasters from Europe, North America and Australia. Among his credits are “The King of Communism: the pomp and pageantry Nicolae Ceausescu”, which won a Grierson Award in 2002, and “Hammer and Tickle: the Communist Joke Book”, which was premiered at the New York Tribeca Film Festival 2006 and won best documentary at the Zurich Film Festival in the same year. However, he is best known for  his series about contemporary artists “Art Safari”, which has been shown in the UK, Europe, Australia and America, and which won a bronze at the New York Television Awards and a German Grimme Prize in 2007. “Art Safari” featured films on Maurizio Cattelan, Takashi Murakami, Matthew Barney, Sophie Calle and Wim Delvoye, among others. He also produced a limited edition “Art Safari” film on DVD, commissioned by the Deutsche Bank for their exhibition “Affinities” at the Deutsche Guggenheim in 2007

Ben’s latest film is ‘The Great Contemporary Art Bubble’, about the rise and fall of the contemporary art market, was shown on BBC4 in May 2009 and will be broadcast by numerous TV channels across the world later in the year.

Ben writes a monthly column on art for Prospect magazine and writes weekly as an art critic for the Evening Standard. His articles have also been widely published in The Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Financial Times and Sunday Telegraph in the UK and Monopol magazine in Germany.

Finally, His first book, “Hammer and Tickle”. a history of humour under Communism, based on his eponymously titled documentary, was published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in 2008.