Michael Ballhaus
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Michael Ballhaus, A.S.C. (5 August 1935 – 11 April 2017) was a German cinematographer. In 1990, he was the Head of the Jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.
Life and career
Ballhaus was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of actors Lena Hutter and Oskar Ballhaus. and appears as an extra in Ophüls last film Lola Montès (1955).
He came to prominence with his work on sixteen films for Rainer Werner Fassbinder beginning with Whity (1971) and, including The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Chinese Roulette (1976) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978).
After settling in the United States, he worked on many American films, including Baby It's You (1983) for John Sayles; Old Enough (1984) for Marisa Silver; After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), The Age of Innocence (1993), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Departed (2006) for Martin Scorsese; Dracula (1992) for Francis Ford Coppola, and Sleepers (1996) for Barry Levinson.
Ballhaus was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, for Broadcast News (1987), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), and Gangs of New York (2002), but never won. However, he did win the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Cinematography for Goodfellas.
Ballhaus' documentary In Berlin, together with Ciro Cappelari, was released in May 2009.
Personal life
Helga Ballhaus (née Betten), Balhaus' wife from 1958, appeared in a handful of films, including several directed by Fassbinder; she died in 2006. Their son Florian is also a cinematographer who worked on Flightplan and The Devil Wears Prada. In 2011, he married German-American film director Sherry Hormann known for Desert Flower. Michael Ballhaus was a nephew of the German stage and film actor Carl Balhaus who featured in The Blue Angel and M.
Ballhaus died on 11 April 2017, aged 81.
Filmography
