Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow | |
---|---|
Born | Kathryn Ann Bigelow November 27, 1951 San Carlos, California, U.S. |
Education | San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) Columbia University (MFA) |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 1978–present |
Spouse |
Kathryn Ann Bigelow (
Bigelow made her directorial film debut with the outlaw biker film The Loveless (1981). She rose to prominence directing the thrillers Near Dark (1987), Blue Steel (1990), Point Break (1991), Strange Days (1995), and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). For directing the war drama The Hurt Locker (2008), Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director.[3] She has since directed the spy thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and the crime drama Detroit (2017).
She directed episodes of the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1998–1999), and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for her work on the Netflix film Cartel Land (2015). She is known for her collaborations with Eric Red and Mark Boal.
Early life and education
Bigelow was born in San Carlos, California, the only child of Gertrude Kathryn (née Larson; 1917–1994), a librarian, and Ronald Elliot Bigelow (1915–1992), a paint factory manager.[4] Her mother was of Norwegian descent.[5] She attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California.
Bigelow's early creative endeavors were as a student of painting. She enrolled at
Bigelow entered the graduate film program at
Directing career
1981–2002: Directorial debut and breakthrough
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 in 1990[16]
Bigelow's short The Set-Up is a 20-minute deconstruction of violence in film. The film portrays "two men fighting each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over."[10] Bigelow asked her actors to actually beat and bludgeon each other throughout the film's all-night shoot.[15] Her first full-length feature was The Loveless (1981), a biker film that she co-directed with Monty Montgomery. It featured Willem Dafoe in his first starring role. Next, she directed Near Dark (1987), which she co-scripted with Eric Red. With this film, she began her lifelong fascination with manipulating movie conventions and genre.[7] The main cast included three actors who had appeared in the film Aliens.[17] 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's subsequent films, Blue Steel, Point Break, and Strange Days, "merged her philosophically minded manipulation of pace with the market demands of mainstream film-making".[15]
Blue Steel starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie police officer who is stalked by a psychopathic killer, played by Ron Silver. As with Near Dark, Eric Red co-wrote the screenplay. The film, originally bankrolled for $10 million, was shot on location in New York due to financial considerations and because Bigelow does not "like movies where you see a welfare apartment and it's the size of two football fields."[18] Bigelow followed Blue Steel with the cult classic Point Break (1991), which starred Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent who poses as a surfer to catch the "Ex-Presidents", a team of surfing armed robbers led by Patrick Swayze who wear Reagan, Nixon, LBJ and Jimmy Carter masks when they hold up banks. Point Break was Bigelow's most profitable 'studio' film, taking approximately $80 million at the global box office during the year of its release, and yet it remains one of her lowest rated films, both in commercial reviews and academic analysis. Critics argued that it conformed to some of the clichés and tired stereotypes of the action genre and that it abandoned much of the stylistic substance and subtext of Bigelow's other work.[19]
I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what my aptitude is, and I really think it's to explore and push the medium. It's not about breaking gender roles or genre traditions.
— Kathryn Bigelow in 2009[6]
In 1993, she directed an episode of the TV series Wild Palms and appeared in one episode as Mazie Woiwode (uncredited). Bigelow's 1995 film Strange Days was written and produced by her ex-husband James Cameron. Despite some positive reviews, the film was a commercial failure. Furthermore, many attributed the creative vision to Cameron, diminishing Bigelow's perceived influence on the film.[15] She directed three episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street in 1997 and 1998. Based on Anita Shreve's novel of the same name, Bigelow's 2000 film The Weight of Water is a portrait of two women trapped in suffocating relationships. In 2002, she directed K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, about a group of men aboard the Soviet Union's first nuclear-powered submarine. The film fared poorly at the box office and was received with mixed reactions by critics.
2008–present: Awards success and acclaim
Bigelow next directed
She became the first woman to receive an
Bigelow's next film was Zero Dark Thirty, a dramatization of American efforts to find Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty was acclaimed by film critics[26] but also attracted controversy and strong criticism for its allegedly pro-torture stance.[27][28] Bigelow won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director for the film, making her the first woman to win the award twice. She had already won previously for directing The Hurt Locker.[29] She was also the first woman to receive the National Board of Review Award for Best Director.[30]
Bigelow collaborated with
She served as executive producer of Triple Frontier, a film that she was originally going to direct. She gave up directing duties to J. C. Chandor to focus on other projects. Bigelow also directs commercials. She is represented internationally by commercial production company SMUGGLER, where she has directed commercials for the Army National Guard, Budweiser and AT&T, some of which were broadcast during the Super Bowl.[33] In 2022, Bigelow was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for Apple's "Hollywood In Your Pocket".[34]
Unreleased projects
Film style
Bigelow has a shifting relationship with Hollywood and its conventional film standards and techniques. Her work "both satisfies and transcends the demands of formula to create cinema that's ideologically complex, viscerally thrilling, and highly personal".[35] Social issues of gender, race, and politics are entrenched in her work of all genres.[35]
While her films are often categorized in the action genre, she describes her style as an exploration of "film's potential to be kinetic".[36] She often uses "purpose-built" camera equipment[37] to create mobile shots. In many of her films, such as The Hurt Locker, Point Break, and Strange Days, she has used mobile and hand-held cameras.
Bigelow's work is characterized by extensive violence. Most of her films include violent sequences and many revolve around the theme of violence. Violence has been a staple in her films from the beginning of her career. In her first short film The Set-Up (1978), two professors deconstruct two men beating each other up and reflect on the "fascistic appeal of screen violence".[37] For this film Bigelow asked the two actors to actually beat each other up in the film's all-night shoot.[37] This interest in violence seeped into her first full-length feature film The Loveless, starring Willem Dafoe, which follows a 1950s motorcycle gang's visit to a small town and the ensuing violence that occurs. Her next film, Near Dark, follows a young boy who falls in love with a vampire after being bitten by her. The film was conceived as a Western but the genre was so unpopular at the time that Bigelow had to adjust her script and invert the genre conventions.[37] She still used the violent staples of the genre including sieges, shoot-outs, and horseback chases.[37] It is regarded for its combination of the Western and horror genre and its exploration of "homosexuality and 'white America's illusion of safety and control'".[35] The film became a cult classic within the horror genre community. Bigelow herself saw it screened in Greenwich Village with a horror genre crowd.[18]
Blue Steel was her first venture into the action film genre, with which she has stayed throughout her career and has found most success. The film revolves around a female police officer who is falsely accused of a murder and who in the process of clearing her name investigates a killing spree connected to the original murder. Similarly to Near Dark, Bigelow inverts the typical action genre conventions by placing a female protagonist at the center.[37] The film digs deeply into feminist issues and is often taught and studied by feminist film scholars.[35] Her next film Point Break, starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, was her breakout film in terms of mainstream success. The film follows a detective who goes undercover in a suspected criminal gang of surfers who primarily rob banks. It marks the first time that Bigelow used lengthy Steadicam tracking shots. It was also her biggest financial success yet, grossing $83.5 million worldwide with a budget of $24 million.[37] Although her next film, Strange Days, which ruminates on the relationships between media, sex, race, class, and technology,[35] had a budget of $42 million, it only grossed just under $8 million.[37] Although the film flopped, it led Bigelow and her team to spend over a year developing a camera that intended to approximate human vision.[37]
The commercial failure of Strange Days was followed by a stream of commercial and critical flops for Bigelow. Her films The Weight of Water and K-19: The Widowmaker received negative reviews from critics and little attention from the general public. With her independently produced film The Hurt Locker she made a commercial and critical comeback. This film was her transition into political and historical film. The Hurt Locker, which follows members of a bomb squad serving in the Iraq War, was Bigelow's first venture into pseudo-documentary style film, abandoning the aesthetic stylization found in Strange Days and Near Dark.[37] The film utilizes the genre's tendency to use quick cuts, shaky camera, and rapid zooms. It also breaks with the conventional narrative structures of her previous films, following a more unorganized and experimental narrative structure. Her next film, Zero Dark Thirty, is widely seen as a direct extension of The Hurt Locker, going further in-depth of historical analysis and addressing issues of geopolitics and American foreign policy. The film was criticised for its depiction of the CIA's torture practices.[37]
Throughout her career, Bigelow has tended to go to extremes for her films. In Point Break, while filming the skydiving scene, Bigelow was on the airplane with a parachute on, as she filmed Patrick Swayze throw himself into the sky.[36] During surfing scenes in the same film, she would either paddle on a longboard or lean over a nearby boat as far as possible to get shots of Keanu Reeves surfing.[36] For the opening of Strange Days she controlled a crane that dropped a camera man off the edge of a tall building. For The Hurt Locker, Bigelow filmed in Jordan in up to 130 °F (54 °C) heat.[36]
Other work
In November 1976, she appeared in a political 56-minute film, entitled "Struggle in New York" which involved conceptual artists Art & Language.[38]
In the early 1980s, Bigelow modeled for a
Personal life
Bigelow was married to director James Cameron from 1989 to 1991.[39]
Filmography
Film
Year | Title | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Director | Producer | Writer | Notes | ||
1981 | The Loveless | Yes | No | Yes | Co-written and co-directed with Monty Montgomery |
1987 | Near Dark | Yes | No | Yes | Co-written with Eric Red |
1990 | Blue Steel | Yes | No | Yes | |
1991 | Point Break | Yes | No | Uncredited | Co-written with W. Peter Iliff and James Cameron (uncredited) |
1995 | Strange Days | Yes | No | No | |
1996 | Undertow | No | No | Yes | Co-written with Eric Red |
2000 | The Weight of Water | Yes | No | No | |
2002 | K-19: The Widowmaker | Yes | Yes | No | |
2008 | The Hurt Locker | Yes | Yes | No | Academy Award for Best Director Academy Award for Best Picture |
2012 | Zero Dark Thirty | Yes | Yes | No | Nominated — Academy Award for Best Picture |
2017 | Detroit | Yes | Yes | No |
Executive producer
- Triple Frontier (2019)
Television
- Wild Palms: "Rising Sons" (1993) miniseries
- Homicide: Life on the Street: "Fallen Heroes" Parts 1 & 2 (1998)
- Lines of Fire" (1999)
- Karen Sisco: "He Was a Friend of Mine" (2004)
Other works
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1978 | The Set-Up | Director | Short film |
1983 | Born in Flames | Actress | Role: Kathy Larson |
1987 | "Touched by the Hand of God" – New Order | Director | Music video |
1988 | "Reach" – Martini Ranch | Actress | Music video |
1995 | "Selling Jesus" – Skunk Anansie | Director | Music video |
2014 | Last Days | Director | Short film / PSA[40] |
Awards and nominations
Year | Association | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1988 | Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival | Silver Raven | Near Dark | Won | [41] |
Paris International Fantastic and Science Fiction Film Festival | Golden Unicorn | Won | [42][43] | ||
Saturn Awards | Best Director | Nominated | |||
1995 | Strange Days | Won | |||
2000 | San Sebastián International Film Festival | Golden Shell Award | The Weight of Water | Won | |
2008 | Academy Awards | Best Director | The Hurt Locker | Won | |
Best Picture | Won | ||||
AFI Dallas International Film Festival | Dallas Star Award | Won | |||
Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award | Best Director | Won | |||
Best Picture | Won | ||||
Best Woman Director | Won | ||||
Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Film Industry |
Won | ||||
Women's Image Award | Won | ||||
American Film Institute | Top 10 Films of 2009
|
Won | |||
Austin Film Critics Association Awards | Best Director | Won | |||
BAFTA Awards | Best Direction | Won | |||
Best Film | Won | ||||
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
Broadcast Film Critics Association
|
Best Director | Won | |||
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
Columbia University | "Andrew Sarris" Award | Won | |||
Denver Film Critics Society Awards | Best Director | Won | |||
Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directing – Feature Film | Won | |||
Hollywood Film Festival Award | Director of the Year | Won | |||
Houston Film Critics Society Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Director | Won | [44] | ||
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
London Film Critics' Circle Awards
|
Director of the Year | Won | |||
National Society of Film Critics Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
New York Film Critics Circle Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
New York Film Critics Online Awards | Best Director | Won | |||
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Director | Won | [45] | ||
Online Film Critics Society | Best Director | Won | |||
Producers Guild of America Awards | Best Theatrical Motion Picture | Won | |||
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards
|
Best Director
|
Won | |||
Santa Barbara International Film Festival Awards | Outstanding Director of the Year | Won | |||
Satellite Awards | Best Director | Won | |||
Best Director, Golden Space Needle Award | Won | ||||
Southeastern Film Critics Association Award | Best Director | Won | |||
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association
|
Best Director | Won | |||
Vancouver Film Critics Circle | Best Director | Won | |||
Venice Film Festival | Human Rights Film Network Award | Won | |||
Sergio Trasatti Award | Won | ||||
Arca Cinemagiovani Award for Best Film Venezia 65 |
Won | ||||
SIGNIS Award | Won | ||||
Young Cinema Award | Won | ||||
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards
|
Best Director | Won | |||
Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award | Best of the Fests | Nominated | |||
Perseverance Award | Nominated | ||||
Golden Globe Awards | Best Director | Nominated | |||
Best Motion Picture – Drama | Nominated | ||||
Venice Film Festival | Golden Lion | Nominated | |||
Saturn Awards | Best Director | Nominated | |||
2012 | Academy Awards
|
Best Picture | Zero Dark Thirty | Nominated | |
2012 | BAFTA Awards | Best Direction | Nominated | ||
2016 | Primetime Emmy Awards
|
Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking |
Cartel Land | Won | [46] |
2017 | Rome Film Festival | BNL People's Choice Award | Detroit | Nominated |
See also
- Kathryn Bigelow's unrealized projects
- List of Academy Award records
- List of female film and television directors
- List of accolades received by The Hurt Locker
- List of accolades received by Zero Dark Thirty
References
- ISBN 9780824211134.
- ^ Stone, Oliver (April 29, 2010). "Kathryn Bigelow". TIME. The 2010 TIME 100. Archived from the original on May 2, 2010. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
- ^ "'Hurt Locker' wins best picture, director". Today.msnbc.msn.com. March 8, 2010. Archived from the original on July 22, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2010.
- ^ "Kathryn Bigelow Biography". yahoo.com. Retrieved June 26, 2010.
- ^ "Early praise for 'Hurt Locker': Narrative on war in Iraq may be Oscar-worthy".
- ^ a b "Kathryn Bigelow: Road Warrior" – an interview published June 2009 in Newsweek magazine
- ^ a b c d e Keough, Peter (2013). Kathryn Bigelow: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. pp. ix–xii.
- ^ Duray, Dan (6 February 2013). "Point Break: As Oscar Calls, a Look at Kathryn Bigelow's Decade in the NYC Art World". Observer.
- ^ Hollywood Flashback: When Kathryn Bigelow Made Oscar History as the First Woman to Win Best Director|Hollywood Reporter
- ^ a b Dargis, Manohla, "Action!", New York Times, June 18, 2009. Access date: June 27, 2009
- ^ Hond, Paul, [1],Columbia Magazine, Winter 2009-10. Access date: Sept. 10, 2015
- Village Voice, June 23, 2009. Access date: June 27, 2009.
- ^ "Kathryn Bigelow – Filmmaking at the Dark Edge of Exhilaration" Archived 2011-11-21 at the Wayback Machine, Harvard Film Archive, July 1, 2009. Access date: December 17, 2009.
- ^ Filkins, Dexter (December 17, 2012). "Bin Laden, The Movie". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
- ^ a b c d Benson-Allott, Caetlin. "Undoing Violence: Politics, Genre, and Duration in Kathryn Bigelow's Cinema" (preview/paywall), Film Quarterly 64.2 (Winter 2010), pp. 33–43. University of California Press; link via JSTOR. "Abstract: Kathryn Bigelow's eight feature films all seek a balance between progressive representations of gender and race and the demands of commercial filmmaking. Close attention to the filmmaker's experiments with duration and camera technology reveals her interest in reworking Hollywood conventions to critique conventionally masculinist genres."
- MIT), March 16, 1990. An interview with the star (Jamie Lee Curtis) and writer-director (Bigelow) of Blue Steel.
- ^ Simmons, Amy (July 2019). "Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987)". Senses of Cinema.
- ^ a b Kelleher, Ed (April 1990). "Kathryn Bigelow: Twisting Movie Conventions". The Film Journal. 93: 2 – via ProQuest.
- ^ Jermyn, Deborah, and Sean Redmond. "Chapter Six – All That Is Male Melts into Air: Bigelow on the Edge of Point Break." The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor. London: Wallflower, 2003. 106–7. Print.
- ^ The Hurt Locker at Metacritic
- ^ "The Hurt Locker (2009)". Rotten Tomatoes. December 15, 2009. Retrieved January 25, 2013.
- ^ Roberts, Soraya (February 22, 2010). "Prince William becomes President at 2010 BAFTA awards; Kathryn Bigelow wins best director". New York Daily News. Retrieved February 23, 2010.
- ^ Weaver, Matthew (March 8, 2010). "Kathryn Bigelow makes history as first woman to win best director Oscar". The Guardian. London. Retrieved March 8, 2010.
- ^ "First woman to win top Guild's award". Gulf Times. January 31, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2010.
- ^ "Kathryn Bigelow wins best director BAFTA for 'Hurt Locker'". New York: NY Daily News. Reuters. February 21, 2010. Retrieved July 10, 2010.
- ^ "Zero Dark Thirty". Metacritic. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ Child, Ben (January 9, 2013). "Zero Dark Thirty premiere sparks anti-torture protest". The Guardian. London. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ Mayer, Jane. "Zero Conscience in "Zero Dark Thirty"". The New Yorker. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
- ^ Polo, Susana, "Kathryn Bigelow Wins New York Film Critics Circle Award Twice; Makes History", The Mary Sue, December 4, 2012.
- ^ "NBR Awards name 'Zero Dark Thirty' best film", boston.com, 2012/12/05.
- ^ Sneider, Jeff (28 January 2016). "Kathryn Bigelow to Direct True Crime Drama About Detroit Riots for Annapurna". Retrieved 9 February 2016.
- ^ Libon, Daniel (August 20, 2016). "Kathryn Bigelow Movie to be Filmed in Dedham". Dedham Patch. Retrieved August 20, 2016.
- ^ "Kathryn Bigelow Joins Smuggler, Public Record Signs Daisy Zhou". adage.com. 2017-06-30. Retrieved 2021-05-04.
- ^ "DGA Announces Nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Television, Commercials and Documentary for 2021". Directors Guild of America. January 26, 2022. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
- ^ .
- ^ a b c d Ressner, Jeffrey (Winter 2009). "Kinetic Camera". Directors Guild of America.
- ^ .
- ^ "Struggle in New York – Борба у Њујорку". kontakt-collection.org. Retrieved 2023-05-06.
- ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2020-11-26.
- ^ Feeney, Nolan (December 4, 2014). "Premiere: Watch Kathryn Bigelow's Short Film About Elephant Poaching, Last Days". TIME. Retrieved December 6, 2014.
- ^ "Near Dark (1987) - Awards". IMDB. Retrieved August 3, 2021.
- ^ "Near Dark (1987)". AFI Catalog. Retrieved August 2, 2021.
- ^ "Festival International de Paris du Film Fantastique et de Science Fiction". 4 December 2018. Retrieved August 2, 2021.
- ^ "KCFCC Award Winners – 2000-09". 14 December 2013. Archived from the original on 27 August 2017. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
- ^ "Awards". Oklahoma Film Critics Circle.
- ^ "Kathryn Bigelow". Emmys.com. Retrieved October 21, 2019.
External links
- Kathryn Bigelow at IMDb
- June 2009 Interview with The A.V. Club
- Q&A with Kathryn Bigelow in Men's Journal
- Literature on Kathryn Bigelow
- Davidson, Amy, "The Oscar for Torture?", blog, The New Yorker, January 2013. "The problems people have with Zero Dark Thirty are about directorial choices, and it is more than reasonable that Kathryn Bigelow be judged on them."
- Denby, David,"Bigelow's Fact and Fiction", review, The New Yorker, December 2012.
- G. Roger Denson, "Zero Dark Thirty Account of Torture Verified by Media Record of Legislators and CIA Officials", commentary, criticism, The Huffington Post, December 31, 2012.
- G. Roger Denson, "Women Looking at Men Loving: Eve Sussman, Kathryn Bigelow and the Women Writers of Mad Men", cultural criticism, The Huffington Post, March 8, 2013.
- Brockes, Emma, "Kathryn Bigelow: under fire", The Guardian (London), January 11, 2013. "[S]ome say her new thriller, Zero Dark Thirty ... endorses torture".
- The films of Kathryn Bigelow, Hell Is for Hyphenates, December 31, 2013
- Jérôme d'Estais, Kathryn Bigelow : passage de frontières, Editions Rouge profond, 2020, ISBN 9791097309312