Movies: Ken Russell

DON’T SHOOT THE COMPOSER is far from an ordinary profile of Georges Delerue. It also serves as a calling card for Ken Russell, whose work would define the 1970s as Delerue’s did in the 1960s. It begins with a sly work of pastiche, parodying the conve...

Arrigo Boito's Il Mefestefele was first performed in 1868 and his most known work. In Ken Russell's modern interpretation presented by the Genoese Opera, it has Faust as an ageing hippy. He smokes marijuana and is tormented by his lost youth. Mephist...

A short directed by Ken Russell....

This documentary begins with Ken Russell posing the question: "What is a true English folk song, if there is such a thing?" After recieving an indifferent response from his dog, Ken journeys around the countryside of England searching for an answer. ...

Prokofiev (BBC, tx. 18/6/1961), subtitled 'Portrait of a Soviet Composer', was the second of Ken Russell's composer biopics, though it takes a rather different approach from his first, Gordon Jacob (BBC, tx. 29/3/1959). Whereas in the earlier film Ru...

Documentary presenting Alan Parker’s view of British cinema with comments from Richard Lester and others and location report from King’s Lynn on the making of Hugh Hudson’s Revolution, starring Al Pacino, Donald Sutherland, and Nastassja Kinski....

An investigation into nunsploitation, and why men find images of nuns involved in sexual situations erotic. The programme also controversially covers the Muslim hibab and burka....

A parable made in the manner of an old silent comedy about artistry and illusion....

A short musical directed by Ken Russell....

The outrageous life of the American dancer of the 1920s, Isadora Duncan, whom Ken Russell described as "part genius and part charlatan"....

The result of a challenge from Melvyn Bragg to write a film that Ken Russell himself would be eager to see banned, was A Kitten For Hitler – a 10-minute short in which a plucky young Jewish boy traverses the globe on a quest to warm the Führer's hear...

Ken Russell's silent film treatment of the 19th century comic novel by the Brothers Grossmith - George and Weedon. Starring Bryan Pringle, Avril Elgar and Murray Melvin. Adapted by Ken Russell and John McGrath. First shown on BBC2 at 10.10pm on Satur...

About modern day pilgrims to Lourdes, France, and Our Lady of Lourdes, that brings out the religious hysteria and the commercialism of the alleged healings. The sanctuary is visited by millions each year, and Lourdes has become one of the prominent p...

A portrait of the life and work of the great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, exploring both his music and his passionate interest in his country's folklore....

A personal and nostalgic film about an apartment building in Bayswater, where Russell once lived, and about the residents who inhabited it. The building is demolished to make way for an unattractive and bland office....

South Bank Show documentary concerning the life and music of Ralph Vaughn Williams....

Ken Russell revisits the location of his 1960 documentary about coal mining in Northumberland and catches up with some of the people who appeared in the film. In 2005, the last of the deep mines was closed down. As the remnants of a once-proud indust...

One of the most conceptually original of all the films that Ken Russell made for Monitor, this imagines an expedition of alien archaeologists (represented only by the soundtrack commentary) examining various artefacts strewn along a stretch of Britai...

The updated autobiography of Britain’s most controversial film director, the maker of Women in Love, The Devils, The Music Lovers, Tommy and The Rainbow, is as unconventional and brilliant as his best films. Moving with astonishing assurance through...

Short documentary about Shelagh Delaney and her hometown Salford....