Vilmos Zsigmond

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Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. (born June 16, 1930) is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.

He was born in Szeged, Hungary, and studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest and Film Art in Budapest. Together with his friend and fellow student László Kovács, he filmed the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest and then smuggled the film out of the country shortly afterwards.

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. In 1964 working with a favorite crew which included Laszlo Kovacs, 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. The first film he worked on in the United States was "The Sadist," starring Arch Hall, Jr.

He gained prominence during the 1970s working on Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye and Steven Spielberg's 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the latter of which won him the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Zsigmond has worked with Brian De Palma on Obsession, Blow Out, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and The Black Dahlia, and with Michael Cimino on The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate.