Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond has died

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind DOP was 85.

by Anne-Katrin Titze

Vilmos Zsigmond shot François Truffaut and Bob Balaban in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Vilmos Zsigmond shot François Truffaut and Bob Balaban in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who won an Oscar for his work on Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, died on New Year's Day at his home in Big Sur, California at the age of 85. The legendary collaborator with Robert Altman (McCabe And Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye), Brian De Palma (Blow Out. Obsession, The Bonfire Of The Vanities) and Woody Allen (Cassandra’s Dream, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Melinda And Melinda), also received Oscar nominations for Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Mark Rydell's The River and De Palma's The Black Dahlia. The Cannes Film Festival in 2014 presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Vilmos Zsigmond, with fellow cinematographer Yuri Neyman (Liquid Sky) founded the Global Cinematography Institute in 2012. Two-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler for Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory and Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a guest instructor. Wexler died last week on December 27 at the age of 93.

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