Ken Russell

Known for DirectingBorn 1927-07-03Died 2011-11-27Southampton, Hampshire, England, UK

Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011) was an English film director. He is known for his pioneering work in television and film, and for his controversial style. He has been criticized as being over-obsessed with sexuality and the church. His subject matter is often about famous composers, or based on other works of art which he adapts loosely. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he did creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios. He is best known for his Oscar-winning romantic drama Women in Love (1969), the notoriously controversial The Devils (1971), the rock musical Tommy (1975), and the science fiction film Altered States (1980). One noted admirer, British film critic Mark Kermode, attempting to sum up the director's achievement, called Russell; "somebody who proved that British cinema didn't have to be about kitchen-sink realism – it could be every bit as flamboyant as Fellini. He now makes very strange experimental films like Lion's Mouth and Revenge of the Elephant Man, and they are as edgy and out there as the work he made in the 1970s."Read more

Movies & web series

Ken Russell's ABC of British Music

Old Battersea House

Lourdes

Lion's Mouth

The Preservation Man

The Who: One Band's Explosive Story

Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil

Celebrity Naked Ambition

Dance of the Seven Veils

Twiggy

Alice in Russialand

Agatha Christie's Marple

In Search of the English Folk Song

Don’t Shoot the Composer

Frank Stubbs Promotes

Elgar: Fantasy of a Composer on a Bicycle

The Debussy Film

Waking the Dead

The Who: The Kids Are Alright

The Planets

The Devils

Watch the Birdie

Music for the Movies: Georges Delerue

Omnibus

Elgar

The Lonely Shore

London Moods

Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill

Variations on a Mechanical Theme

Dante's Inferno

Mahler

Altered States

Hell on Earth: The Desecration & Resurrection of The Devils

A British Picture: Portrait of an Enfant Terrible

A House in Bayswater

Peepshow

Women in Love

Antonio Gaudí

Shelagh Delaney's Salford

Lady Chatterley

The Music Lovers

The Boy Friend

The Secret Life of Arnold Bax

Prisoner of Honor

Tommy

Mr. Nice

Always on Sunday

Crimes of Passion