Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn Ann Bigelow

27 November 1951

An American filmmaker. She enrolled at San Francisco Art Institute in the fall of 1970 and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in December 1972. While enrolled at SFAI, she was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program in New York City. Bigelow's early work benefited from her apprenticeships with Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, and Lawrence Weiner.

Bigelow entered the graduate film program at Columbia University, where she studied theory and criticism and earned her master's degree. Her professors included Vito Acconci, Sylvère Lotringer and Susan Sontag, and she worked with the Art & Language collective and noted conceptualist Lawrence Weiner. She also taught at the California Institute of the Arts. While working with Art and Language, Bigelow began a short film, The Set-Up (1978), which found favor with director Miloš Forman, then teaching at Columbia University, and which Bigelow later submitted as part of her MFA at Columbia.

Her first full-length feature was "The Loveless" (1982), a biker film which she co-directed with Monty Montgomery and featured Willem Dafoe in his first starring role. Next, she directed "Near Dark" (1987), which she co-scripted with Eric Red. In the same year, she directed a music video for the New Order song "Touched by the Hand of God"; the video is a spoof of glam metal imagery.

Bigelow directed "The Hurt Locker" qualified for the 2010 Oscars as it did not premiere in an Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles until mid-2009. She won the Directors Guild of America award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (becoming the first woman to win the award) and also received a Golden Globe nomination for her direction. In 2010, she won the award for Best Director and "The Hurt Locker" won Best Picture at the 63rd British Academy Film Awards. She became the first woman to receive an Academy Award for Best Director for "The Hurt Locker".

As director, actress, writer

• The Set-Up (1978)
• The Loveless (1982)
• Born in Flames (1983)
• Near Dark (1987)
• Blue Steel (1989)
• Point Break (1991)
• Strange Days (1995)
• The Weight of Water (2000)
• K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
• The Hurt Locker (2009)
• Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
• Last Days (2014)

Quotations

* * *

I don't want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.

* * *

I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.

* * *

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.

* * *

For some individuals - some soldiers, some contractors - combat provides a kind of purpose and meaning beyond which all else potentially pales in comparison.

* * *

On the other hand, I believe there's hope, because the breakdown and the repair are happening simultaneously.

* * *

I like to be strong.

* * *

Perhaps the only thing in my favor is that I am very tenacious. I don't take 'no' very well.

* * *

My dad used to draw these great cartoon figures. His dream was being a cartoonist, but he never achieved it, and it kind of broke my heart. I think part of my interest in art had to do with his yearning for something he could never have.

* * *

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.

* * *

There's really no difference between what I do and what a male filmmaker might do. I mean we all try to make our days, we all try to give the best performances we can, we try to make our budget, we try to make the best movie we possibly can.

* * *

I need to have my hands on the DNA of a film.

* * *

I'm drawn to provocative characters that find themselves in extreme situations. And I think I'm drawn to that consistently.

* * *

There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible.

* * *

I do have to say I have been very fortunate.

* * *

I don't believe in censorship in any form.

* * *

I think violence in a cinematic context can be, if handled in a certain way, very seductive.

* * *

I thrive on production. It feels very much like a natural environment for me.

* * *

The journey for women, no matter what venue it is - politics, business, film - it's, it's a long journey.

* * *

War's dirty little secret is that some men love it.

* * *

One of the elements in the film that really fascinated me was not to look at the world in bi-polar terms of us vs them or east vs west, which was a by-product of the Cold War.

* * *

What's most galvanizing for me is the opportunity to be topical and relevant and entertaining. That's the holy grail.

* * *

I like high impact movies.

* * *

I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

* * *

Am I a 'woman of action'? I don't think of myself that way.

* * *

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

* * *

I suppose I like to think of myself as a filmmaker.

* * *

It's totally thrilling to direct.

* * *

When I made my first film, I didn't think of it as directing, so it wasn't like I set out to become a director.

* * *