Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. was born on February 6, 1922, in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., and died on December 27, 2015.
He was an American cinematographer, film producer, and director.
Haskell attended the progressive Francis Parker School,
He met Barney Rosset, while he was in school.
After a year of college at the University of California, Berkeley and a tour in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II,
Wexler decided to become a filmmaker.
Wexler was based in Chicago, made many documentaries, including The Living City, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
He was said to be film history’s ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographer.
Haskell Wexler parents were Simon and Lottie Wexler.
Haskell worked on documentary features and short films; low-budget docu-dramas such as 1959’s The Savage Eye; television’s The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet; and TV commercials.
Wexler and Conrad Hall founded Wexler-Hall, a television commercial production company.
He then made ten documentary films with director Saul Landau, along with “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang,”.
It was aired on PBS and won an Emmy Award and a George Polk Award. Other notable documentaries shot and co-directed (with Landau) by Wexler included “Brazil: A Report on Torture,” “The CIA Case Officer,” and “The Sixth Sun: A Mayan Uprising in Chiapas.
He received the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography for the John Sayles film Matewan (1987), for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award.
He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1993, the first active cameraman to be awarded and in 1996 Wexler was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the first cinematographer in 35 years to be so honored.
He was the subject of a documentary, Tell Them Who You Are, directed by his son, Mark Wexler in 2004.
Haskell received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Independent Documentary Association in 2007 and the same from the Society of Operating Cameramen.
some of Haskell films he worked on have been preserved by the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (inducted in 2013), Days of Heaven (2007), Medium Cool (2003), In the Heat of the Night (2002), American Graffiti (1995), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1993).
Haskell Wexler passed away at 93 yrs old.