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Lajos Koltai

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Lajos Koltai, ASC, HSC, (born April 2, 1946 in Budapest, Hungary) is a Hungarian cinematographer and film director best known for his work with legendary Hungarian director Istvan Szabo, and Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000 for his work on the film Malena.

Early years and career

Born at the beginning of the Cold War, he became interested in film at a very young age, though in Hungary at the time, film containing subversive content was heavily censored. He shot his first short on a Super 8 film camera at the age of 14 and began to draft short scripts and turn them into movies starring friends and family. One year he won first and second prizes at a local amateur film festival, and coincidentally another young filmmaker, Istvan Szabo, was the head of the jury. Koltai graduated from the School of Drama and Film in Budapest, a school known for nurturing such legends as Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and Laszlo Kovacs. ASC.

Collaboration with Istvan Szabo

Still early in his career he gained international recognition during his collaborations with Szabo, namely his film 'Mephisto', which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 1981, and the cult political classic "Angi Vera". by Pal Gabor At this point the international film community was starting to take notice of these Eastern European films. While Hollywood was at the peak of creativity a decade before after several decades of turning out films that didn't face the same restrictions as in these parts of the world, the Hungarian artistic spirit was beginning to find its place in the world, and many Hungarian directors were confronting truths about their country's tainted Nazi-affiliated history . What followed was a slew of artistic and political masterpieces, the teen-oriented "Time Stands Still", [1982] a film many considered to be well ahead of its time, Cannes Film Festival winner Oberst Redl ("Colonel Reld", 1985), which garnered yet another Oscar nomination, and "Hanussen", another political drama loosely based on the rise of Hitler.

Work in Hollywood

Around this time Koltai decided to make the move to the United States, a dramatic departure for any European filmmaker, let alone cinematographer, though clearly many opportunities lied in the Hollywood playing field. So he joined the American Society of CInematographers , (ASC), and began to compile an impressive body of work, notably Luis Mandoki's White Palace, Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, Born Yesterday, When a Man Loves a Woman, Just Cause, Jodie Foster's directoria debut Home for the Holidays, and Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau's last film together Out to Sea. While none of these films had a particularly signature or even beautiful style (save perhaps Mandoki's White Palace), due to the cookie-cutter industry standards Hollywood notoriously places over artistic license, it was around this time that another fateful collaboration took place, and that would be with Giussepe Tornatore, the legendary director of Cinema Paradiso. The Legend of 1900 would be their first film together, a story about a piano player who was born and raised on a steam boat. Tornatore brought out some of Koltai's best work by allowing an actual creative collaboration to take place on set, instead of the cinematographer just taking orders from the director, and the result is what many (including Koltai himself) consider to be his most beautiful work. This led to a career high for any cinematographer, being nominated for an Academy Award for Tornatore's sweeping love story, Malena, in 2000.

Fateless

Koltai recently directed his first film, the Holocaust drama, Fateless (Sorstalanság), based on the Nobel Prize winning novel by the same name. It has already been released in Hungary with moderate success and is slated to be released in the United States by January 2006. It will be distributed by THINKfilm and has already had much exposure and success on the film festival circuit premiering at the Telluride Film Festival, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Chicago Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Washington Jewish Film Festival, the Boston Jewish Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, the Woodstock Film Festival, the Berlinale, or Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the prestigious Golden Berlin Bear, and countless others. It was also nominated for Best Score (Ennio Morricone) and Best Cinematography (Gyula Pados) at the European Film Awards, and Hungary has nominated it for the 2006 Academy Awards. Fateless is now on a list of 58 countries as potential nominees for Best Foreign Film.

His friends and co-workers call him by his nickname, 'Sutyi'.

As of February 15th, 2006: Koltai finalizes first American directing deal for Focus Features, on the film 'Evening', scripted by Susan Minot [Stealing Beauty] and Michael Cunningham [The Hours]. Shooting will take place summer 2006 in Rhode Island. Actresses Claire Danes, Toni Collette and Vanessa Redgrave are in talks to star, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Filmography

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