CineMasters

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What makes a CineMaster?

Years of experience, global renown, a career of landmark films and a public fascination with every move they make – and that’s just for starters.

Our ongoing season celebrates directors and key figures from filmmaking history, and gives you the opportunity to watch their work on the big screen.

Explore the CineMasters archive on Letterboxd

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CineMasters: John Schlesinger

March 2026

John Schlesinger's centenary is a long-overdue opportunity to reassess the work of a director who, at the time of his death in 2003, was considered one of the all-time greats of British filmmaking. A queer cinema pioneer, Schlesinger was also probably the only openly gay director to make mainstream films featuring explicitly LGBTQ+ characters in every decade from the 1960s to the 2000s.

Although sometimes deprecating his own work as 'feel-bad cinema', Schlesinger's films were often more ambiguous than overtly tragic. Their focus is frequently on naïve characters with modest ambitions — a decent job, a satisfying relationship — who, in fulfilling those dreams, discover them to be closer to nightmares. Growing up gay and Jewish at a time when neither identity was welcomed, Schlesinger's sympathies always lay with society's outsiders, yet he remained clear-eyed enough to know they would rarely find their happy endings.

CineMasters: John Schlesinger is presented in association with The Consummate Professional: John Schlesinger at 100, a UK-wide retrospective curated by Marc David Jacobs and Claire Nicolas.

https://schlesinger-100.webflow.io/

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