Author name: Ben Slater

I can trace the beginning of my love of cinema to when I was three or four years old. My father decided it was time for me to start watching ‘proper’ films, not just kids’ stuff. As an early adopter of the Betamax Video Recorder he could record films from British TV – especially those broadcast after I’d gone to bed – and play them back for me in the day. I wasn’t used to getting attention from my Dad, because – as a senior doctor at the local hospital – he worked long hours. Even at home he wasn’t one for playing with his kids. So, when he told me we were going to watch a film together, I was surprised and excited. We didn’t go to the cinema often; a few times a year to see things like The Water Babies or the Superman films, and my mother always took us. Dad had no interest in new releases, preferring to carefully curate from cinema’s past.