Filmmaker Ken Russell poses the question: "What is a true English folk song, if there is such a thing?" After recieving an indifferent response from his dog, Russell journeys around the English countryside seeking for an answer. He encounters and interviews such famous artists as Donovan, Fairport Convention, Osibisa, Eliza Carthy, So What, Edward II and The Albion Band, among others.

One of the most conceptually original of all the films that Ken Russell made for Monitor, this imagines an expedition of alien archaeologists (represented only by the soundtrack commentary) examining various artefacts strewn along a stretch of Britain's coastline and musing on their possible significance.

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. Mephisto makes a bet with God that he can turn anyone to pagan life, even someone as innocent as Faust. From then on it is a battle of good against evil in a flamboyant, surreal display of primary colours, PVC costumes, nurses with swastikas, rocket trips, love and even characters dressed as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Ken Russell said because the devil is always with us is his reason for the contemporary setting.

In 1960, Ken Russell visited Bedlington Colliery, Northumberland to make one of his first documentary films, following life in the mining community.

A romance between a clumsy knight and a damsel in distress.

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 wide-ranging surveys of the state of a particular art. The Light Fantastic (BBC, tx. 18/12/1960) was written and presented by Ron Hitchins, a Cockney barrow boy who has long been interested in a great many dance forms, and who has recently taken up Spanish dancing. Hitchins participates in some of the dance sequences, but his main contribution is an enthusiastic commentary that helps personalise what could have been simply a disparate collection of dance footage. He's not shy about expressing likes and dislikes, being none too keen on ballroom dancing (too choreographed), rock'n'roll (too monotonous) and Morris dancing (just doesn't like it), though anything genuinely spontaneous gets a thumbs up, even if it's a room full of people dressed in black swaying to the sound of a gong.

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 - Peter Blake, Peter Philips, Pauline Boty and Derek Boshier.

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 movements.

An immensely moving story of sacrifice, idealism and musical genius which charts the last five years of Frederick Delius's life through the eyes of a young composer and aide, Eric Fenby.

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

Rock star Roddy Usher is confined to an insane asylum after murdering his wife. There, he is given various shock treatments by Nurse Smith and Dr Calahari, resulting in a series of bizarre and nightmarish adventures.

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

Ken Russell is often cited as one of the fathers of the music video, with Tommy (1975) widely recognised as one of the pivotal works in the development of the form. However, as the far more obscure Monitor item London Moods from 1961 proves, he was experimenting with non-narrative illustrations of pre-recorded music fourteen years earlier.

Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

In the Paris of the 1910s, brash young sculptor Henri Gaudier begins a creative partnership with an older writer, Sophie Brzeska. Though the couple is 20 years apart in age, Gaudier finds that his untamed work is complemented by the older woman's cultural refinement. He then moves to London with Brzeska, where he falls in with a group of avant-garde artists. There, Gaudier encounters yet another artistic muse in passionate suffragette Gosh Boyle.

Born to a rich landowner in the waning days of the Victorian era, Ursula Brangwen grows into a beautiful young woman full of imagination and ambition. The free-spirited Ursula begins to feel trapped by her prim surroundings, but her life changes when she has an erotic experience with Winifred, a bisexual teacher. From then on, Ursula puts all of her passion and creativity into the pursuit of sexual fulfillment. But her insatiable quest becomes a source of anguish.

London, England, November 5th, 1892, Guy Fawkes Night. The famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas discreetly go to a luxury brothel where the owner, Alfred Taylor, has prepared a surprise for the renowned author: a private and very special performance of his play Salome, banned by the authorities, in which Taylor himself and the peculiar inhabitants of the exclusive establishment will participate.

A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?

The untimely death of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino prompts the many women in his past to reminisce about his troubled rise to superstardom.

In the 19th century, Romantic composer/pianist Franz Liszt tries to end his hedonistic ways but keeps getting sucked back in by his seductive fellow composer Richard Wagner.