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| Michael Ballhaus shot several of Scorsese's films, including Goodfellas. |
Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus has died, aged 81. Nominated three times for an Oscar - for Broadcast News, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Gangs Of New York - the Berlin-born filmmaker passed away after a short illness.
In a career that spanned more than five decades, he worked with directors including Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Marriage Of Maria Braun, Fox And His Friends and others), Francis Ford Coppola (Bram Stoker's Dracula) and Martin Scorsese (including Oscar-winner The Departed and Goodfellas).
Scorsese led the tributes last night. In a statement he said: "By the time we met, he had already made film history with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and I revered him. He was a lovely human being, and he always had a warm smile for even the toughest situations — anyone who knew him will remember his smile. We started working together in the '80s, during a low ebb in my career. And it was Michael who really gave me back my sense of excitement in making movies.
"For him, nothing was impossible. If I asked him for something difficult, he would approach it with enthusiasm: He never told me we couldn’t do something, and he loved to be challenged. If we were running out of time and light, he would figure out a way to work faster. And if we were behind schedule and getting into a situation where we had to eliminate set-ups, he would sit down with me calmly and we would work it out together: instead of getting frustrated about what was being taken away, he would always think in terms of what we had. Really, he gave me an education, and he changed my way of thinking about what it is to make a film. He was a great artist. He was also a precious and irreplaceable friend, and this is a great loss for me.”
Ballhaus, who was a member of both the American Society of Cinematographers and German Society of Cinematographers, released an autobiography Bilder Im Kopf (Pictures In My Head) in 2014 and, in 2016, he received an Honorary Golden Bear in Berlin.
Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick said: “Michael Ballhaus was a cinematographer who was a kindred talent to directors and whose oeuvre is unique. He was a great artist, a wonderful person and a long-time friend.”
He is survived by his wife Sherry Horrmann and sons Jan Sebastian and Florian, from his marriage to Helga Betten, who died in 2006, both of whom have also forged careers in filmmaking.
