Ken Russell Movies

Pop Goes the Easel was Ken Russell’s first full-length documentary for the BBC’s arts series Monitor. It focused on 4 British Pop Artists...

An actor is playing Claude Debussy in a film about the composer's life, and finds himself identifying with his subject very closely.

Moving with astonishing assurance through time and space, Russell recreates his life in a series of unconventional interconnected episodes –...

A young girl named Alice travels through a century of Russian history, from Tsarism, through Socialism and Glasnost. Alice's original characters...

A biopic of Czech composer Martinu in two parts: the first part is a recurring dream; the second, a Freudian analysis of the dream.

Gangsters run rampant until they encounter a gutsy minister.

Far from an ordinary profile of Georges Delerue; it also serves as a calling card for Russell, whose work would define the 1970s as Delerue’s...

Based on the famous Gustav Holst musical suite, Ken Russell's musical delight takes viewers on a magnificent journey of the planets of the Solar...

A portrait of the English composer Gordon Jacob.

A plucky young Jewish boy traverses the globe on a quest to warm the Führer's heart with the gift of a cuddly feline. (The result of a challenge...

John Betjeman reminisces on Britain's great historical exhibitions since the 1870s: including Alexandra Palace, the Empire Exhibition at Wembley and...

An illustration of various mechanical instruments, from the musical-box to 1950s electronica.

The story of the influential 19th century British poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his troubled and somewhat morbid relationship with his wife and his...

One of the most conceptually original of all the films that Ken Russell made for Monitor, this imagines an expedition of alien archaeologists...

A personal and nostalgic film about an apartment building in Bayswater, where Russell once lived, and about the residents who inhabited it. The...

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

A 'radical Brontë' ballet for young people.

Ken Russell's engrossing examination of the great 20th-century composer tells Williams' story through the eyes of his widow, Ursula, with personal...

While most of Ken Russell's documentaries for the BBC's Monitor arts strand focused on a single creative figure, he would also occasionally make more...

Ken Russell directed a short document of German actress (and widow of famed composer Kurt Weill) Lotte Lenya performing many of Weill's best known...