Walter Lassally

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Walter Lassally with his Oscar in Crete (2006)

Walter Lassally (born December 18, 1926 in Berlin ; † October 23, 2017 in Chania , Crete ) was a British cameraman from Germany who won an Oscar for best camera and was honored with the ASC International Lifetime Achievement Award .

Life

Arthur Lassally's son emigrated to Great Britain in 1939. He began his career as a camera assistant in 1947 for the film Things Happen at Night and initially shot semi-professional short films, some of which he published under the pseudonym John Walters .

From 1950 freelance cameraman, he made contact with Lindsay Anderson in 1954 . In 1956 he founded the Free Cinema movement with Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson . His camera work was characterized by on-site shooting, the absence of artificial light and the use of mobile handheld cameras.

Parallel to his work in Free Cinema, he had been closely associated with Greek cinema since the mid-1950s. He also photographed some productions in West Germany and worked for American television in the 1980s. Lassally worked on the creation of around 120 films by 2001. He was a member of the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) and taught at the National Film and Television School .

At the Oscar ceremony in 1965 , he won the Oscar for Best Cinematography in a black and white film , and indeed for Zorba the Greek (1964) by Michael Cacoyannis with Anthony Quinn , Alan Bates and Irene Papas in the lead roles .

He was nominated for the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA Film Award) in 1984 for James Ivory's camera in Heat and Dust (1983) with Julie Christie , Greta Scacchi and Christopher Cazenove . In 1984, the BSC nominated him in addition to the prize for the best camera in The Bostonians (The Bostonians) also by James Ivory in 1984 with Christopher Reeve , Vanessa Redgrave and Jessica Tandy was staged.

For his services as a cameraman in the film industry , he was honored with the Marburg Camera Prize in 2005 and the International Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) in 2008 .

Lassally last lived in Stavros in Akrotiri on Crete . The Oscar he received for Alexis Sorbas in 1965 he had bequeathed to a restaurant on Stavros beach before it was lost in a fire.

Lassally died in October 2017 at the age of 90 after complications from an operation.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

literature

  • Gunnar Bolsinger, Michael Neubauer, Karl Prümm, Peter Riedel (eds.): The cameraman Walter Lassally . Schüren, Marburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89472-410-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Πέθανε ο βραβευμένος με Όσκαρ για τη φωτογραφία του "Zorba the Greek", Walter Lassally
  2. Hans Michael Bock: Lexicon directors and cameramen from A – Z , rororo, Reinbek 1999, p. 277 f.