Cinematographers will be ready to meet innovative challenges as digital era progresses.

Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and Yuri Neyman, ASC revealed plans for an advanced cinematography educational program for postgraduate students and veteran filmmakers to be called the Global Cinematography Institute™ with headquarters in Los Angeles. Details of the educational enterprise were announced today at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

Global Cinematography Institute classes will be held on Virtual Stage UVS1 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Yuri Neyman explains that the program is devoted to preparing filmmakers to take advantage of ongoing advances in digital and virtual cinematography technologies.

“Cinematography is a global language, which uses light and darkness, composition, camera movement, colors, focus, contrast and other elements of visual grammar to bring stories to life,” Neyman said. “We intend the Institute to provide a forum where new and experienced filmmakers from all sectors of the industry can learn about the Art of Cinematography from the past, present and future, including the evolving art of digital and virtual cameras and lighting.”

Zsigmond and Neyman both came to the United States as political refugees. Zsigmond was born and raised in Hungary. He graduated from the Film Academy in Budapest and immigrated to the United States in 1957. Zsigmond earned an Oscar® for cinematography on Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977 and other Academy Award nominations for The Deer Hunter in 1978, The River in 1984 and The Black Dahlia in 2006. He is one of the founders of the Budapest Cinematography Master Class at his alma mater for film students from around the world since its inception in 2001.

Neyman came to the United States from Moscow, USSR during the early 1980s. Critics lauded his talent for creating modern film noir looks in Liquid Sky and DOA, two of his earliest films. “New York has never been photographed better in a movie,” a Wall Street Journal critic wrote about his work. Besides compiling an array of narrative film and commercial credits, Neyman has invented technologies designed to help cinematographers control the quality of images. He also developed the “History of Cinematography” program, which he has taught at the American Film Institute. Neyman has also conducted seminars about color correction and digital technology at various film schools.

The Global Cinematography Institute will launch the new educational program with a weekend-long seminar in late January 2012 and classes beginning in March 2012.