Vilmos Zsigmond

Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. (born June 16, 1930) is an Academy Award winning Hungarian-American cinematographer. 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 photograp... more

Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. (born June 16, 1930) is an Academy Award winning Hungarian-American cinematographer. 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. 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... less