Vilmos Zsigmond
| Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC | |
|---|---|
Vilmos Zsigmond at 43rd KVIFF
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| Born |
June 16, 1930 Szeged, Hungary |
| Died | January 1, 2016 (aged 85) Big Sur, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Cinematographer |
| Years active | 1955–2015 |
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˌvilmoʃ ˈʒiɡmond]; June 16, 1930 – January 1, 2016) was a Hungarian-American cinematographer.
In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.
Zsigmond was born in Szeged, Hungary, the son of Bozena (née Illichman), an administrator, and Vilmos Zsigmond, a celebrated soccer player and coach. He studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. He received an MA in cinematography. He worked for five years in a Budapest feature film studio becoming "director of photography." Together with his friend and fellow student László Kovács, he chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest on thirty thousand feet of film and then escaped to Austria shortly afterwards. This 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.
In 1962, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He settled in Los Angeles and worked in photo labs as a technician and photographer. During the 1960s, he worked on many low-budget independent films and educational films, as he attempted to break into the film industry. Some of the films that he worked on during this period credited him as "William Zsigmond," including the classic horror B-Film, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. The first film he worked on in the United States was The Sadist, starring Arch Hall, Jr. In 1964 working with a favorite crew which included László Kovács, Jim Enochs, and Ernie Reed, Vilmos shot the European style, neo-noir, black and white film Summer Children (aka A Hot Summer Game) which has recently been fully restored digitally for DVD release.
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