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Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker Saul Landau Dead At 77

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Award-winning documentary filmmaker Saul Landau, who profiled political leaders like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Chile's Salvador Allende, has died at age 77.

Colleague John Cavanagh says Laundau died Monday night in Alameda, Calif., after battling bladder cancer.

Landau's 1968 documentary "Fidel" gave U.S. audiences one of their earliest close-ups of the revolutionary leader who installed Communism in Cuba.

His most acclaimed documentary was likely 1979's "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang," which examined the effects of radiation exposure to people living downwind from Nevada's above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. The film received a George Polk Award for investigative reporting and other honors.

(© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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