Vilmos Zsigmond – born in Szeged, southern Hungary – emigrated to the United States in 1958 and initially worked in Los Angeles as a photo lab technician and photographer and also worked on many low-budget films during the 1960s. His breaktrough was Robert Altman’s revisionist Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
He later worked with Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Michael Cimino and Woody Allen. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography for The Deer Hunter.
“We had the opportunity to see a fantastic commemoration of Vilmos at the world premiere of the film at Camerimage,” Alan Lowne, editor-in-chief of British Cinematographer wrote. “The film showed us the black-and-white images taken by him during his life, the way he saw life.”
Vilmos Zsigmond died two years ago in his California home at the age of 85.
Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter (Collection Christophel/© Universal Pictures / EMI FIlms/Universal Pictures / Emi Films)
