Refocus: The Films of Ken Russell

Ken Russell was among the most provocative, creative, original and important directors in British film and television history but his career and legacy have long suffered under the media clichés of ’Madman’ or ’Enfant Terrible’ of British cinema - nicknames which have tended to delegitimise his status and pioneering role in post-war film and television culture.

This scholarly edited collection refuses these terms and aims to not only reflect and further current critical research into Russell’s work but to see Russell as the Renaissance man of British cinema. It brings together the work of new and established scholars as well as the reflections of those who knew and worked with Russell. ReFocus: The Films of Ken Russell offers new perspectives across the breadth of Russell’s extensive career in television, film and other mediums, and seeks to better understand not only his reception, but the importance of collaboration to his practice, and the legacy of the man himself.

Matthew Melia is a Senior Lecturer in Literature, Film and Media at Kingston University, UK. His research focuses on both the work of Ken Russell and Stanley Kubrick. He is particularly interested in Russell’s unmade and abandoned projects. He is co-editor of The Jaws Book (2020) as well as co-editor and editor of the forthcoming books, Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange (2022) and The Jurassic Park Book: 30 years of Spielberg’s Dinosaurs (2023). He has contributed to a variety of publications including a chapter on Russell’s umade BBC films for Shadow Cinema: The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films (2021) as well the The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick (2021) and Reframing Cult Westerns (2020). In 2017 he convened the conference Ken Russell: Perspectives, Reception and Legacy (Kingston University) and in 2018 he co-convened the conference A Clockwork Symposium: A Clockwork Orange - New Perspectives.