Vilmos Zsigmond won an Oscar for his accomplishment on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and received Oscar nominations for his work on The Deer Hunter, The River (1984) and The Black Dahlia (2006). He was born in Szeged in 1930, and studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest where he graduated in 1955. In 1956 he and his friend and fellow student Laszlo Kovacs fleed from Hungary with about 10,000 metres of footage taken during the Hungarian Revolution agains the Soviet regime. They settled in the United States where Zsigmond became citizen in 1962. Zsigmond started his career working on low-budget independent and educational films. He then was hired as cinematographer by Robert Altman for the film McCabe and Mr. Miller in which he first used a technique applying filters. He worked with Altman on The Long Goodbye and with Stephen Spielberg on The Sugarland Express, as well as on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which won him the Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1977. He worked with Brian De Palma on Obsession, Blow Out, The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Black Dahlia, with Michael Cimino on The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate, with George Miller on The Witches Of Eastwick and with Woody Allen on Melinda and Melinda, Cassandra's Dream, and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Zsigmond received Britain's BAFTA in 1978 for the film Deer Hunter which he considered his best work. He received a Life Achievement Award in Cannes in 2014. He maintained contact with his home country where he worked in 2002 as cinematographer for a Hungarian film, Bank Ban, for the first time. He returned to Hungary on several occasions, most recently in June last year when he was greeted on his 85th birthday during an exhibition - supported by MMA - showing a large collection of his photos at Ludwig Museum in Budapest.

The last interview with Vilmos Zsigmond – He was given it in Hungary (April 2015)
The video below can be viewed with English subtitles: