Ken Russell Retrospective @ AMMI

In terms of English language filmmaking from the late '60s and early '70s, it's easy to focus on the output from American auteurs but directors from the UK, like Ken Russell, were also amazing innovators.

A Ken Russell Retrospective begins tonight at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens and runs through October 31. Like Stanley Kubrick, Russell started out as a still photographer and it shows in his exquisite compositions. He started in documentary work for the BBC but in the early '60s began making narrative works, and his adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love won him an Oscar nod.

That feature, with its nude male bear skin rug wrestling, plays on Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 6:30 pm. Might we also suggest catching a screening of the best rock opera about a blind pinball wizard, otherwise known as Tommy, on Saturday at 6:30 pm? Another must-see on our list, Lisztomania screens on Sunday at 4 pm. It also has Roger Daltry in it, as well as that top notch title and Ringo Starr playing the Pope. Is that type-casting, or what?