March 2 – April 7, 2024 Peter Medak: An American Cinematheque Retrospective Series | THE CHANGELING, ROMEO IS BLEEDING, THE KRAYS, LET HIM HAVE IT, THE RULING CLASS, THE ODD JOB, NEGATIVES Aero Theatre, Egyptian Theatre and Los Feliz 3
ABOUT THE SERIES: The American Cinematheque is thrilled to present a retrospective of renowned Hungarian-British filmmaker, Peter Medak, whose films have quietly shaped the tapestry of genre-bending cinema. After fleeing Hungary for the U.K. in 1956, Medak was no stranger to swift changes, inspiring five decades of a faithfully contrasting filmography. His debut film NEGATIVES, recently restored by Severin, explores the defiance of sexual norms, capturing the zeitgeist of the late 1960s as the dissatisfaction of heteronormative lifestyles surged with changing ideologies. The film marked the beginning of Medak’s fascination with emphasizing a viewer’s innate voyeurism, using cameras, unseen voices, and paranoia as a bridge into characters’ worlds. His flamboyant satire, THE RULING CLASS, looks into the world of a 14th-century schizophrenic who has recently inherited his family estate, and a Jesus complex. THE ODD JOB follows a depressed middle-class man who can’t seem to outrun the assassin he hired on his own life. After a decade of satires, Medak shifted from black comedy to the supernatural with his legendary haunted-house film THE CHANGELING, which seamlessly intertwines a father’s grief with spine-chilling ghost stories – making it one of cinema’s greatest horror films. By 1990, it was mobsters and neo-noir that fascinated Medak, releasing a string of scorching gangster films – from his biopic about THE KRAYS to a devastating tale of error in LET HIM HAVE IT and the psychosexual thriller, ROMEO IS BLEEDING. It is with great pleasure that the American Cinematheque hosts the works of one of cinema’s most distinct voices.