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.

Share this with others on...
News

Bait for the beast Simon Panay on challenging attitudes to albino people in The Boy With White Skin

Ice cool Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani talk Reflection In A Dead Diamond

Songs and silence Urška Djukić on music, unspoken communication and Little Trouble Girls

The beauty of doubt Toni Servillo on costumes by Carlo Poggioli and working with Paolo Sorrentino on La Grazia

Peter Hujar's Day leads Independent Spirit nominations Full list of film contenders revealed

One Battle After Another takes top Gotham prize It Was Just An Accident wins on the numbers

More news and features

Interact

More competitions coming soon.