Vilmos Zsigmond, Hungarian-American cinematographer, Died at 85

Vilmos Zsigmond was born on June 16, 1930, in Szeged, Hungary and died on January 1, 2016.

He was a Hungarian-American cinematographer.

A survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history, in 2003.

His parents were Bozena Illichman and Vilmos Zsigmond, a celebrated soccer player and coach.

Vilmos studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest.

Vilmos gained his MA in cinematography.

Zsigmond has worked for five years in a Budapest feature film studio becoming “director of photography.”

Himself and his friend and fellow student László Kovács, Zsigmond chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest on thirty thousand feet of film and then escaped to Austria shortly afterwards.

It included the early chapter of his professional life, with some of their footage of the revolution, constitutes the opening segment of the bio-documentary by PBS’s Independent Lens (2009) called No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos.

Zsigmond has been nominated for the following awards; the BAFTA, in 1971, for McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the 1977 BAFTA, for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award, 1999, from the American Society of Cinematographers, and the Lifetime Achievement Award, 2010, from the Manaki Brothers Film Festival.

Vilmos Zsigmond passed away at 85 yrs old.