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In 1997 the Oscar for best documentary went to director Leon Gast and producer David Sonenberg
Photo: Steven D Starr / Getty Images
He wanted to document a music festival, but then turned hundreds of hours of material around a boxing match, the fight that would go down in history as "Rumble in the Jungle": US filmmaker Leon Gast is dead. He was 85 years old.
The director died on Monday in his house in Woodstock, New York, announced the organizers of the Woodstock Film Festival, of which he was a long-time advisory member.
The documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple confirmed the death of her colleague to the industry journal "Hollywood Reporter".
Gast's boxing documentary "When We Were Kings" revolves around one of the most spectacular fights in boxing history between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
The two US heavyweights traveled to what was then Zaire in 1974 to get into the ring there.
Ali won in the eighth round by knockout.
It took Gast, however, two decades until he had the funding and the rights together for the film.
In “When We Were Kings” contemporary witnesses such as singer James Brown, author Norman Mailer and director Spike Lee had their say.
The film was released in 1996 and won an Oscar for best documentary in 1997.
Both boxers were present at the award ceremony.
Guest pointed his camera at "cultural titans" such as Celia Cruz, BB King, Kobe Bryant and Muhammad Ali, it was said in a post from the Oscar Academy: "He will be missing."
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