Close Encounters cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond dies

Hungarian-born cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, best known for his work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Deer Hunter, has died at age 85.

Zsigmond, one of Hollywood’s most celebrated cinematographers, died in Big Sur, California, according to reports.

Ranked among the ten most influential cinematographers in film history in a 2003 survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild, Zsigmond won an Oscar in 1977 for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters (1977) and was nominated again a year later for The Deer Hunter (1978, dir. by Michael Cimino). He received an Oscar nomination as recently as 2006, for his work on The Black Dahlia (2006, dir. by Brian De Palma).

Zsigmond, who was born in Szeged, Hungary, in 1930, fled Hungary shortly after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, taking with him secret footage of Soviet forces crushing the revolution. He became a US citizen in 1962.

Source: BBC