Ken Russell

Ken Russell, born Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell in Southampton, Hampshire, on 3 July 1927 and dead on 27 November 2011, was a British film director known for pioneering work in television and film and for a flamboyant, controversial style. After short spells in the Royal Air Force and the Merchant Navy, and brief careers in dance and photography, he moved into television and began directing for the BBC, where his creative adaptations of composers' lives were unusual for the time. His feature films were mostly liberal adaptations of existing texts or biographies, notably of Romantic-era composers, and he also made films about Elgar, Delius, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Liszt. He is best known for the Academy Award-winning Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), the Who musical fantasy Tommy (1975) and the science fiction horror film Altered States (1980). Late in life he turned to low-budget experimental films such as The Lion's Mouth and Revenge of the Elephant Man.