Famed Hungarian cinematographer passes away

Academy Award winner Hungarian cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond passed away on the first day of 2016 in the United States, the American entertainment weekly reported this Sunday. He had 100 movies to his credit as a cameraman since 1953.

Vilmos Zsigmond was born in 1930 in Szeged, SE Hungary. He received a diploma in cinematogrpahy in Budapest. Together with his friend and fellow student László Kovács, Vilmos Zsigmond chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Stalinist uprising in Budapest on thousands of meters of film and then escaped to neighboring Austria shortly afterwards.

He then settled in the United States where he received citizenship in 1962. He gained prominence during the 1970s and - as Variety says - for the next two decades Zsigmond was one of the most in-demand cinematographers in Hollywood, going on to work with such directors as Michael Cimino, Spielberg, Scorsese, De Palma and George Miller.

He received an on Oscar for the 1977 Steven Spielberg movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” He was a member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (cinematographers branch) since 2007 and he was honored with lifetime achievement awards by the ASC for his outstanding work in 1999.