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Mike Leigh, the veteran director of “Vera Drake,” “Another Year” and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” will be honored at Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival with its Career Achievement Golden Bee Award.

Leigh will also host a masterclass at the festival, the second edition of which is taking place June 22 to 30 in Malta’s capital city of Valletta. The director, who has earned seven Oscar nominations and won the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or for 1993’s “Naked,” will be in conversation with Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission.

The Mediterrane Film Festival has also revealed its first jury members, who will judge the festival’s competition section, consisting of 12 films from the region. At the festival’s Golden Bee Awards closing ceremony on June 30, prizes will be handed out for best feature film, acting performance, screenwriting, production design, creative technical performance and the special jury award.

Jury...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

A film that feels uprooted from deep beneath the earth, Raven Jackson’s poetic, patient debut is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Tethered around the life of Mack, a Black woman from Mississippi, as we witness glimpses of her childhood, teenage years, and beyond, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt becomes a sensory experience unlike anything else this year. Shot in beautiful 35mm by Jomo Fray and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, there’s a reverence for nature and joy for human connection that seems all too rarified in today’s landscape of American filmmaking. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: VOD...

From The Video Archives Podcast, writer/director Roger Avary and writer/producer Gala Avary discuss a few of their favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Taxi Driver (1976)

Star Wars (1977)

Matinee (1993)

Dune (1984)

Terror On A Train a.k.a. Time Bomb (1953)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Batman (1989)

Yentl (1983)

Nuts (1987)

Spaceballs (1987)

Die Hard (1988)

Top Gun (1986)

Cocksucker Blues (1972)

Mijn nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet & Sandra (1975)

Straw Dogs (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

A History Of Violence (2005)

Day Of The Dolphin (1973)

Babylon (2022)

Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)

Carrie (1976)

Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995)

Blow Out (1981)

The Matrix (1999)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Killing Zoe (1993)

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

The Tenant (1976)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Bugsy Malone (1976)

Phantom Of The Paradise (1974)

The Muppet Movie (1979)

The Rules Of Attraction (2002)

The Sound Of Music (1965)

Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (1971)

Giant (1956)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Babe (1995)

Time Bandits...

Ronnie Taylor, the British cinematographer who shared an Oscar for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and whose collaborations with that director and Ken Russell produced some of the most memorable films of their eras, died August 3 in Ibiza. He was 93 and had suffered a stroke months earlier.

His death was announced by The British Society of Cinematographers, where Taylor served as president from 1990-1992.

In addition to Gandhi, Taylor’s work with Attenborough includes 1985’s A Chorus Line and 1987’s Cry Freedom. Earlier, Taylor had served as camera operator on Attenborough’s Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969 and the 1972 Churchill biopic Young Winston starring Simon Ward in the title role.

As cinematographer, Taylor’s trio of Russell collaborations are The Devils (1971), Savage Messiah (1972) and Tommy (1975).

According to the Bsc, Taylor began his film career as a clapper boy on 1942’s The Young Mr. Pitt, and by the early 1960s his...

When Ken Russell’s provocative religious horror “The Devils” became available to stream for the first time last week, cinephiles the world over were re-introduced to one of the greatest under appreciated films of all time — one that is surprisingly poignant in our current state of political unease. Infamous for its controversial release (the film was banned in several countries and received an X rating only after Russell cut a handful of the most incendiary scenes), the 1971 epic offers a stylish and scathing parable about the dangerous ways that the powerful can exploit religious zeal to stay that way.

Based on the true story of the trial of Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest who was executed in 1634 on charges of witchcraft, Russell adapted “The Devils” from John Whiting’s 1960 play and Aldous Huxley’s 1952 novel, The Devils of Loudun. Russell digressed stylistically from his source material, taking a contemporary approach...

Warner Archive Week! continues at Trailers from Hell, with director Bernard Rose introducing "Savage Messiah."Ken Russell’s 1972 bio-pic about the fiery french sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (played by Scott Antony) whose brief and bright career positioned him as an important figure in the Cubist movement. There’s nothing cube-like about ravishing co-star Helen Mirren whose long and distinguished career was just beginning to take off. Featuring the venerable Michael Gough as Gaudier-Brzeska’s father and with future director Derek Jarman providing the production design, as he had for the previous The Devils.

Ken Russell’s 1972 bio-pic about the fiery french sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (played by Scott Antony) whose brief and bright career positioned him as an important figure in the Cubist movement. There’s nothing cube-like about ravishing co-star Helen Mirren whose long and distinguished career was just beginning to take off. Featuring the venerable Michael Gough as Gaudier-Brzeska’s father and with future director Derek Jarman providing the production design, as he had for the previous The Devils.

The post Savage Messiah appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

British Animation Awards | East Side Stories | Jarman 2014 | Scratch'n'Sniff Cinema Presents: The Wicker Man

British Animation Awards, Nationwide

There's so much good animation being done in this country it's difficult to find it all in one place, but these awards give you a selection of the best. It's pretty simple: three award categories – short films, music videos, commercials – and three programmes presenting examples of each, after which viewers vote on their favourites. The variety is endless, from a demented lothario (I Love You So Hard) to a state-of-the-art tale voiced by Bill Nighy and Stephen Mangan (The Hungry Corpse), from comedy wildebeest and pandas to head-trip videos from bands such as Tame Impala and Atoms For Peace. The films play at 19 venues across the country and the winner is announced in March.

Various venues, Thu to 19 Feb

East Side Stories, Nationwide

In the early postwar days, Japanese youth movies used to be about gangs,...

To celebrate their 13th anniversary this year, the Melbourne Underground Film Festival is going green!

No, they’re not out to save the kookaburra or anything. Instead, they’re hosting a special tribute to the New Irish Low Budget Cinema, featuring two films by acclaimed filmmaker Ivan Kavanagh, plus work by Colin Downey, Gary Kenneally and Gerard Lough.

Muff will host a repeat screening of Kavanagh’s celebrated thriller Tin Can Man — it previously screened at Muff in 2008 — as well as his latest film, The Fading Light. The three other Irish films screening all fall into the horror/thriller genres, from Downey’s The Looking Glass to Kenneally’s Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman and Lough’s trilogy-ending The Shaken 3. And, in addition, the entire fest kicks off with the opening night Irish thriller Charlie Casanova by Terry McMahon.

But don’t think Muff is all Irish all the time this year,...

In a tribute to British filmmaker Ken Russell, who died in November 2011 at the age of 84, a selection of his work is being presented at several London cinemas this month.

Among his credits are 1971's X-rated The Devils starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave; 1975's Tommy, a star-studded smash-hit film version of The Who's rock opera; the 1980 sci-fi film Altered States, adapted from Paddy Chayefsky's novel and providing the feature film debuts of William Hurt and Drew Barrymore; and the 1988 cult classic horror flick The Lair of The White Worm, based on Bram Stoker's novel and starring Hugh Grant.

The programme of the London season of screenings ranges from his earliest television documentaries through to his most acclaimed feature films, plus discussions and special events.

Ken Russell Forever, which began on March 10 and finishes on March 20, has already screened films including Gothic, Crimes of Passion, Whore, Tommy, Altered States,...

"In the week where the film industry honor the six decade career of the late director Ken Russell, comes the announcement of the death of Christopher Logue," writes Rhett Bartlett. "Mr Logue wrote the screenplay for Ken Russell's sole film in 1972 — Savage Messiah," a biopic based on the life of French sculptor Henri-Gaudier Brzeska. "One year before his screenplay, Mr Logue appeared in Ken Russell's 1971 bold film — The Devils, as Cardinal Richelieu, the French clergyman who begins the film by influencing Louis Xiii to raze fortified castles and suppress feudal nobility." Bartlett also notes that Logue appeared as the "Spaghetti-eating Fanatic" in Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky and "made a brief appearance in Jerzy Skolimowski's Moonlighting (1982) and 19 years later in [Charles Shyer's] The Affair of the Necklace. Christopher Logue died on 2 December 2011, five days after Ken Russell."

"'Now hear this' — the three words that Christopher Logue, who has...

By Rhett Bartlett

In the week where the film industry honour the six decade career of the late director Ken Russell, comes the announcement of the death of Christopher Logue.

Mr Logue wrote the screenplay for Ken Russell’s sole film in 1972 - Savage Messiah ; adapted from the H.S Ede book of the same name authored in 1931.

Click to read more…...

Dan Ireland offers his rememberance of “Uncle Ken.”

A benefit of having such an eclectic stable of gurus is that our well of experience and stories about working in the business — often with and for giants — is increasingly deep. A number of our gurus, then, have Ken Russell (who died this past weekend) stories. Bernard Rose shared such a story in 2008. And Dan Ireland remembers the man just below.

One of the great joys of my life was my wonderful association with the great, the brilliant, the bad boy of British Cinema himself, Uncle Ken Russell.

Being an early devotee of Women In Love, The Music Lovers, The Devils, The Boyfriend, Savage Messiah, Mahler, Tommy, Altered States, Crimes of Passion and just about anything he did, I once tried in vain to get him to attend a tribute that I, along with my partner Darryl Macdonald, organized at the Seattle...

Naked wrestling, religious mania and The Who's Tommy: director Ken Russell transformed British cinema. His closest collaborators recall a fierce, funny and groundbreaking talent

Glenda Jackson

I worked with Ken on six films. Women in Love was the first time I'd worked with a director of that genius, and on a film of that size. What I remember most was the creative and productive atmosphere on set: he was open to ideas from everyone, from the clapperboard operator upwards. Like any great director, he knew what he didn't want – but was open to everything else.

As a director he never said anything very specific. He'd say, "It needs to be a bit more … urrrgh, or a bit less hmmm", and you knew exactly what he meant. I used to ask him why he never said "Cut", and he said, "Because it means you always do something different." They gave...

Legendary British filmmaker Ken Russell, the notorious director famous for boundary-pushing films such as Women in Love, Altered States and The Devils, has died at 84 following a series of strokes.

For an artist who's been called an iconoclast, a maverick and a genius — one with a professed love for consciousness-altering drugs — Russell (born July 3, 1927) got his start in a fairly conventional manner. Following a stint in the service, Russell worked as a photojournalist to minor acclaim before going to work at the BBC as a director in 1959.

While at the BBC, Russell made a series of historical documentaries, still regarded as impressive for their impressionistic visual technique. This is the beginning of the flamboyant style that became synonymous with the name Ken Russell. Many of these television films focused on renowned composers, including Edward Elgar, Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. Interestingly, this is subject matter Russell would return to often...

Director Ken Russell, best known for his movies featuring sex-starved nuns, nude male wrestling, "offensive" religious symbolism, and kaleidoscopic musical numbers, died Sunday, Nov. 27, in the United Kingdom. Russell had suffered a series of strokes. He was 84. Now hardly as remembered or admired as, say, '70s Hollywood icons Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, or Martin Scorsese, Russell not only was — more than — their equal in terms of vision and talent, but he was also infinitely more daring both thematically and esthetically. In fact, Russell was so innovatively controversial that he was referred to as the enfant terrible of British cinema while already in his 40s and 50s. But if middle age brings out complacency and apathy in most people, its effect on Russell (born July 3, 1927, in Southampton) seems to have been the opposite. Following years of work on British television, Russell's 1969 film adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love...

Following a series of strokes, British film director Ken Russell died on Sunday at the age of 84. Russell was famed for being experimental and flamboyant with his films which had heavily sexual overtones and often rebelled against the otherwise rigid and subdued tone used by other famed British filmmakers. It earned him the nickname 'The Fellini of the North'.

Russell first came to notice with 1967's "Billion Dollar Brain", the third film in the Michael Caine-led Harry Palmer spy drama series based on Len Deighton's books. Two years later he directed his signature film - an adaptation of Dh Lawrence's "Women In Love".

'Women' scored numerous Oscar nominations and featured the now infamous nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates that broke the taboo of full frontal male nudity on camera in a mainstream film.

That lead to numerous films in the 1970's that have since become infamous.

Ken Russell with Twiggy on the set of The Boyfriend (1971)

 

By Lee Pfeiffer

Director Ken Russell, who once seemed destined to enter his family's shoe business, has died after a series of strokes at age 84. Russell served in the British navy before using his talents as a photographer to become a documentary film maker. Once he began making major studio films, they were often steeped in controversy. Russell seemed to have little regard for whether his movies had boxoffice appeal. Instead, he focused on his own creative visions of storytelling. One of Russell's most acclaimed films, the 1970 version of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love earned him as Oscar nomination and was both a critical and financial success. The films he made in the years after were not as well regarded. His 1971 film The Devils was considered so shocking that it has been censored and cut into various versions throughout the world.

Following the sad death of director Ken Russell yesterday, James looks back at his sometimes stunning body of work...

While his best years were clearly long behind him, the passing of director Ken Russell, one of the undoubted titans of post-war British cinema, still feels like a huge loss for the world of film. Contrarian, provocateur and a lover of excess in all its forms, Russell was a filmmaker whose work was rarely restrained, seldom safe and almost always memorable, although not necessarily for the right reasons.

Despite a childhood desire to be a ballet dancer, it was as a photographer that Russell initially made his name, and it was through this route that he secured a job in 1959 within the BBC.

Working as an arts documentarian during the 1960s, Russell honed his craft, creating a series of artful, evocative films, mainly focusing on composers such as Debussy, Elgar and Strauss.

Ken Russell, who has died aged 84, was so often called rude names – the wild man of British cinema, the apostle of excess, the oldest angry young man in the business – that he gave up denying it all quite early in his career. Indeed, he often seemed to court the very publicity that emphasised only the crudest assessment of his work. He gave the impression that he cared not a damn. Those who knew him better, however, knew that he did. Underneath all the showbiz bluster, he was an old softie. Or, perhaps as accurately, a talented boy who never quite grew up.

It has, of course, to be said that he was capable of almost any enormity in the careless rapture he brought to making his films. He could be dreadfully cruel to his undoubted talent,...

The director Ken Russell has died aged 84. We look back at his most memorable moments, from The Devils to Women in Love

• Ken Russell: films in photographs

After early attempts at carving out a career as a photographer, Russell and his future wife Shirley-Ann began making short films with a fantasy/parable bent – in contrast with the socially engaged spirit of the then influential Free Cinema movement. Peep Show (1956) was a parody of silent cinema, while arguably the most striking of the shorts was Amelia and the Angel, part funded by the BFI, about a girl looking for angel's wings for a school play.

Russell's proficiency got him noticed by the BBC, and he was put to work on the arts documentary strand Monitor. He made a string of TV programmes with increasingly elaborate formats – on everything from pop art to brass bands, culminating with his epic film about Edward Elgar,...

It's been 40 years since Southampton boy Ken Russell filmed his notorious The Devils. Stuart Jeffries asks him about saints, sinners and the most frightening film he ever saw

Ken Russell is leaning on his stick outside the Pebble Beach restaurant in Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire, while his fourth wife parks the car. "Thanks for recognising me," he says as I shake his hand. It would be hard not to. Russell is wearing open-toed sandals, red trousers pulled up so far over his waist they're bearing down on his nipples and stripy shirt, while his big florid face is topped by a rage of grey hair.

But today Russell, now 84, has the air of a last-act Lear, or Tigger unbounced. Two weeks ago he suffered a stroke; this is only his second outing from the New Forest hospital where he's been recuperating. After greeting me, he looks rheumily out into the middle distance,...

Be Warned That There Is Both Male And Female Nudity Depicted In This List

Here we're neither talking about the extended nudity in Russ Meyer's 'nudie cuties', nor the disrobing we're so used to seeing in bedroom or bathroom scenes in movies. These guys and gals may dance, or they may not - but they are definitely naked; and in situations you wouldn't expect...

10: Women In Love (1969)

Ken Russell's autobiography 'A British Picture' tells at some length (if that's the appropriate word) of the difficulty the director had in setting up the nude fight scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in this acclaimed adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel. The most amusing anecdotes on the matter are Oliver Reed's unannounced visit to Russell's home to complain about the 'poofiness' of the unclad battle, and his further objection that the venue for said...

Los Angeles, Oct 7 – Veteran actress Helen Mirren considered breaking her own leg in a bid to avoid shooting for a fully frontal nude film scene.

The Oscar winner was not ready to do a nude scene in Ken Russell’s 1972 film ‘The Savage Messiah’ and thought about harming herself to force the director to rethink the scene, reports imdb.com.

‘The day I had to do that nude scene, where I had to walk completely b**lock naked down a flight of stairs, was awful. It was early days and I was so mortified, embarrassed and unhappy about it,’ she said.

‘I remember that morning looking.

London, Oct 06 – Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren has revealed that she thought of breaking her own leg in a desperate bid to escape her first fully frontal nude film scene in Ken Russell’’s 1972 flick.

The legendary actress admits she was a mess the morning of her big reveal in ‘The Savage Messiah’ and thought about harming herself to force the director to rethink the scene.

“I played a bra-burning suffragette in the turn of the century. It’’s Ken Russell so it was pretty well out there,” the Daily Express quoted her as saying.

“The day I had to do that nude scene, where.

Helen Mirren considered breaking her own leg in a desperate effort to get out of her first fully frontal nude film scene.

The Oscar winner admits she was a mess the morning of her big reveal in Ken Russell's 1972 film The Savage Messiah and thought about harming herself to force the director to rethink the scene.

She tells WENN, "I played a bra-burning suffragette in the turn of the century. It's Ken Russell so it was pretty well out there.

"The day I had to do that nude scene, where I had to walk completely b**lock naked down a flight of stairs, was awful. It was early days and I was so mortified, embarrassed and unhappy about it.

"I remember that morning looking out of my trailer, this funky little caravan thing and wondered if I threw myself off the top step of the trailer I could manage to break my leg and not have to do the scene! I wouldn't like to do that today."

Mirren fast became known for stripping off onscreen - but she insists it isn't as easy as it looks: "It's never comfortable. The best thing would be if all the crew took their clothes off too and then you'd feel fine but it's never comfortable to be the only one without clothes on."...

One of the greatest directors of all time, the 83-year-old Ken Russell, is enjoying a retrospective at the Lincoln Center Film Society, Russellmania, starting this weekend going on through August 5th. This is one filmmaker who pushed the envelope both creatively and professionally -- and in many ways changed both the face of cinema, inspiring many of my generation both aesthetically and personally, Not only will nearly all of his best films be screened there -- from some of my favorites such as The Devils (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972) -- but some of his most widely acclaimed films such as his Oscar-winning Women in Love (1969) and his extravagant version of The Who's Tommy (1975) will get a proper showing again. More importantly, the eccentric British filmmaker will also make an extended appearance here, spending six nights providing conversations with the...

Ken Russell Starting Friday, July 30, the enfant terrible of the artist biopic, Ken Russell is the focus of 9-film retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theatre. The series is capped by personal appearances by the maestro each evening, making this series a must-do for cinephiles. Russell's work can be readily identified by its visual boldness and dream logic: his work is closer to opera or poetry than to traditional film. This series highlights Russell as the master of the mad cinematic gesture. Ken Russell burst on the film scene as a director of international importance with his 1969 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, starring Oliver Reed, Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson, for which Jackson took home the Oscar. Ken Russell directing Oliver Reed in The Devils Some of Russell's most critically acclaimed films from the '70s will be screened, including Savage Messiah, The Devils,...

Two highly-anticipated second feature films from U.S. underground filmmakers will be making their World Premieres all the way over at the 64th annual Edinburgh International Film Festival, which will run for twelve days on June 16-27. The films are Rona Mark’s The Crab and Zach Clark’s Vacation!.

The Crab, which screens on June 21, is the touching story of a verbally abusive man born with two enormous, mutant-like hands; while Vacation!, which screens on June 20, tracks four urban gals let loose in a sunny seaside resort down South.

Both Mark and Clark previously screened their debut features at Eiff. Mark’s Strange Girls screened there in 2008 and Clark’s Modern Love Is Automatic screened in 2009. Both films also ended up as runners-up in Bad Lit’s annual Movie of the Year award, again Strange Girls in 2008 and Modern Love in 2009. Sadly, these two masterpieces are still unavailable on...

Rarely seen works by Ken Russell, Stephen Frears and Albert Finney among festival retrospective

A batch of "lost and forgotten" British films, made more than 30 years ago by many of the industry's leading figures, including Ken Russell, Stephen Frears and Albert Finney, is to be screened at this year's Edinburgh film festival.

The retrospective of 16 rarely seen British-made and directed films from between 1967 and 1979, which have been rediscovered after more than a year's detective work by the event's staff, is expected to be a highlight of the festival, which opens in two weeks.

Some are being shown for the first time in decades, as many of the films, including Savage Messiah made by Ken Russell in 1972 and starring Helen Mirren, the children's detective story What Next, and the original cut of Robert Fuest's The Final Programme, starring Jon Finch, have never been released on video or DVD.

The mini-season,...