Movies: Ken Russell

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...

A biopic about the eminent composer Sir Arnold Bax....

The life of Austrian composer Anton Bruckner and his numeromania....

A writer taking a rest in a country hotel is obsessed with a strange woman in the same hotel. The woman seems to observe him in provocative ways, but he does not dare to approach her. One day he follows her to her room and listens to strange “erotic”...

Russell’s composer biopics were usually labours of love. This was the opposite: he regarded Strauss’s music as 'bombastic, sham and hollow', and despised the composer for claiming to be apolitical while cosying up to the Nazi regime. Strauss is depic...

A young girl (Amelia) is distressed and feeling guilty about losing the wings she was to wear in her school play. Then she notices an angel and follows the angel into a dark building. Upstairs in the attic, bathed in heavenly light, is an artist's mo...

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...

Marine veteran and former middleweight boxing champion Julian Taylor loses control in a bar fight and ends up serving time for aggravated assault. Soon after his arrival, Julian is introduced to Captain Brown, a menacing, overbearing guard who tags h...

Ken Russell directed a short document of German actress (and widow) of famed composer Kurt Weill performing many of his best known compositions for BBC TV series "Monitor"...

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....

A line up of star performers celebrate the very best of Edward Elgar's music in the 150th anniversary year of his birth....

Documentary by Ken Russell that shows Alice traveling through a century of Russian's history, from the period of Tsarism, through Socialism and Glasnost. Alice's original characters embody ideological conflicts crossing politics, art and cultural mov...

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...

Poet John Betjeman is shown visiting locations including Vauxhall Park, Aldersgate Street station, Camden Town and Hatfield, where he recites a handful of his poems....

A short promotional film for the 2010 Oldenburg Film Festival consisting of various actors and film personalities telling a joke about an exceptionally talented frog....

A portrait of the English composer Gordon Jacob....

Mrs Wilhelmina Sterling shows her vast collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings, pottery and other artefacts at her home in Battersea....

A look at "Dracula" in the arts and his supposed real-life inspiration Vlad Tepes....

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...

A study of Antoni Gaudí's architecture (especially the Church of the Holy Trinity in Barcelona), his sources of inspiration and his influence on Picasso. (BFI)...