Congratulations Kathryn Bigelow!
March 8, 2010
by Karen
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Kathryn Bigelow has triumphed overseas. And just recently, she triumphed at home and became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. “There’s no other way to describe it — it’s the moment of a lifetime,” “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men of the military who risk their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world,” she added. “May they come home safe.”
See Also: Oscar Win for International Women’s Day.
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Kathryn Bigelow was born in 1951 near San Francisco. Her mother was a librarian, and her father the manager of a paint factory. Her original goal was to become a painter when she attended the San Francisco Art Institute. After college, she received a scholarship to Whitney Studio Art Program and discovered a stronger interest in directing. She finished her higher education at Columbia University’s film school.
She is a purely independent filmmaker and has never worked for a studio company. Although all her films are full of adrenaline, her genres are eclectic. The Loveless was a biker film. Near Dark centered around vampires. Point Break was about a surfer who became involved with masked bank robbers.
She both wrote and directed her first film The Loveless in 1982. Prior to her big break into movies, she alternated between student, artist, filmmaker and Gap model. She was also the script supervisor for 1980 Union City. In the 90s while not making movies, she focused her talents on directing TV shows and commercials. She also wrote a screenplay.
She has an immense passion for her stories. She chose to film Hurt Locker in Jordon amid temperatures well above the century mark. The inspiration for her award-winning Hurt Locker described her passion:
“There were a lot of macho guys on the set, British SAS, not to mention all these young, studly actors, and all those guys were falling by the wayside,” says Mark Boal, who wrote and co-produced The Hurt Locker. “I’m not walking this hill, no way in hell. I drive past one of the crew who’s literally puking on the side of the road. People are dying on this hill. I drive up, and Kathryn is already at the top. She’s beaten everyone up there.”
She said about her great film Hurt Locker:
I see [soldiers] as extraordinary portraits, regardless of how you feel about the conflict. I think of the film, in a way, as non-partisan. It’s not commenting, as Mark said when he was working on the script. There’s that old saw about how there’s no politics in the trenches. And when [Mark Boal] went over there, sure enough, there’s nobody talking about politics. They’re talking about whether they’re gonna survive, or “What’s your favorite beer?”
Early in 2010, she became the first woman director to win the Directors Guild award for Hurt Locker. She also became the first female director to win at the BAFTA awards, which is the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. She hopes more women can follow her example: “Women’s struggle for equity is a constant struggle, so if this can be a beacon of light, then wonderful,”
Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker was nominated for eight BAFTA awards and won six of them, best picture, director, original screenplay, editing, cinematography and sound. Hurt Locker’s success at the BAFTAs has proven that the combined talents of the movie team is superior to a movie centered mainly on technology and special effects. It is the quality of the people involved, not the quantity of money spent. Avatar was also nominated for eight BAFTAs and won a mere two, production design and special visual effects.
Kathryn Bigelow has some encouragement for aspiring female directors:
If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible. It is.
Kathryn Bigelow has triumphed overseas. And just recently, she triumphed at home and became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. “There’s no other way to describe it — it’s the moment of a lifetime,” “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men of the military who risk their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world,” she added. “May they come home safe.”
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See also…
Gone to Pot: Screenwriter on Natalie Portman’s New Stoner Road Trip Comedy
Show Me the Women in Hollywood
Well I would assume that many film schools are turing out a class of women directors yearly so there has to be an awarenes that women are prepareing themselves for the job of directing. This has to be linked to the fact that Hollywood and Media do not value the female audience, they don’t listen to what we want, they don’t value the female perspective. It will be interesting to see how they react to the concept that they can make money off of the female perspective. Currantly if you look at the “women’s content” channels on Basic cable you will see that women don’t watch them, CW, Oxygen, Style have had miserable ratings and it is often hard to tell what is the most offensive the ads or the programs. In contrast men love the “men’s content” channels which are the many sport channels and SPIKE. At some point media will have to acknowledge that women’s content is “content that women will pay to consume” there is no other relevant definition if they hope to have a female audience and make money.
Congratulations to Kathryn and this is a much overdue step forward for Hollywood. I feel it is significant to mention that Kathryn was married to James Cameron the director of Avatar. Every year I would guess that film schools around the world graduate a new class of potential directors that must be half women. I hope before I die I can see films made by women who are as plain looking as most male directors instead of an occasional film by an ex model and ex wife of a well connected male director. The world view of average looking women might connect more to the female audience.
Hard to believe it took Hollywood this long isn’t it. This is 2010 you would think that the fact that this is a first for women, 52% of the population, would be extremely embarrassing to them. Congrats to Kathryn.
On the media topic, have any of you seen Alice in Wonderland? I allowed my self to be dragged to it and was amazed to really enjoy it. I think it might be the first average girl to superhero movie where the woman superhero doesn’t exist to serve the sexual needs of the male audience or the male superheros (Catwoman etc). There are at least 4 great character identities for girls to play with. Usually girls would need g-strings and body paint to impersonate a movie heroine (Avatar, Fantastic four) Alice in Wonderland is really something! Maybe Hollywood is waking up to the lucrative female audience demo.
[...] the best interests of women. But I had created short biographical profiles of other women such as Kathryn Bigelow and Sheila Lee [...]
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