Ken Russell’s Unmade Films 1968–82: A Critical Reflection

This chapter offers an experiential account of working in the BBC unearthing the abandoned and unmade film project of Ken Russell. It will begin with introducing the TV archive in opposition to the film archive and will draw comparison of the experience of working in my other centre of research, The Stanley Kubrick Archive (University of London: London College of Communication). What are the skills need for an archive focussed on Television and broadcasting rather that one dedicated to film or to the work of one director. What have been the challenges and limitations of working within the BBC Written Archives in Caversham, and what are the pleasures? How do they operate as repositories for the unmade and how do we go about unearthing such material? I will then focus on the presence of Ken Russell in the archive. Between 1956 and 1970 Russell made over 50 celebrated artist bio documentaries for the broadcaster before finally cutting loose from them after the controversy of Dance of the Seven Veils in 1970 - his inflammatory experimental biopic of the composer Richard Strauss. However much of my research has focussed on the films that Russell did not make. This chapter aims, not to discuss these projects themselves, but more how I have approached them and what do they tell us not just of Ken Russell (something I have explored in the collection, Shadow Cinema) but of the BBC as broadcaster in the post war years and his relationship with them. The Russell Unmade research project is ongoing and I will expand the discussion also to incorporate archived unmade projects from the 1990s when Russell returned to working for television, this time for ITV and the Southbank show.