Movies Features

Kathryn Bigelow breaks gender barrier with Hurt Locker's win

By Andy Goldberg Mar 8, 2010, 7:55 GMT

US director Kathryn Bigelow holds her award at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, California, USA 07 March 2010. EPA/PAUL BUCK

Los Angeles - Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker won the Oscar for best picture Sunday and also made history when its director Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the award for best director.

A tense and gripping film set during the Iraq War in 2004 The Hurt Locker was shot in almost documentary style on location in Jordan. It tells the story of a squad of American bomb disposal soldiers in the explosive streets Baghdad. After their leader is killed in a blast they get a reckless replacement with only weeks left till the end of their tour.

Mark Boal was a journalist embedded in a bomb disposal unit in Baghdad in 2004 and wrote the script based on his experiences. The film was made for just 20 million dollars and has earned some 21 million dollars at the global box office to make it the lowest earning Oscar winner ever.

'David slew Goliath,' declared the Los Angeles Times, referring to the low budget film's victory over blockbuster Avatar

Bigelow was clearly overjoyed at The Hurt Locker's victory but had little time to ponder its meaning as a woman.

'I hope I'm the first of many,' she said in a backstage interview. 'And, of course, I'd love to just think of myself as a filmmaker, and I long for the day when a modifier can be a moot point. But I'm ever grateful if I can inspire some young, intrepid, tenacious male or female filmmaker and have them feel that the impossible is possible and never give up on your dream.'

On stage she just seemed overjoyed at the success of her film and the recognition she got as a filmmaker. 'There's no other way to describe it, it's the moment of a lifetime,' she said. 'First of all, this is so extraordinary to be in the company of my fellow nominees, such powerful filmmakers who have inspired me and I have admired for, some of whom, for decades.'

In the run-up to the Oscars, she had also studiously avoided all questions about the significance of being the first woman to nab the directing Oscar, preferring to focus on her role as an artist rather than her identity as a woman.

'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,' she told Newsweek magazine. 'It's not about breaking gender roles or genre traditions.'

Bigelow is far from the only woman to work behind the camera in Hollywood.

Most other female directors specialize in directing and writing films that appeal to women.

But Bigelow's niche is directing men in action or war movies. Her portfolio includes such tense and make dominated films as Near Dark, Point Break and K-19 TheWidowmaker, a claustrophobic thriller set in one of the most male dominated environments you could imagine - a Soviet nuclear sub.

In the Hurt Locker the only female role is the military-wife who's left behind, who appears for barely a minute or two in the entire movie.

Bigelow is not the first woman to be nominated for the directing Oscar. Italy's Lina Wertmuller was the first, for directing the 1975 film Seven Beauties. Jane Campion got a nod for The Piano in 1994 and Sofia Coppola was nominated for Lost in Translation in 2004.

But whether Bigelow's win will boost the fortunes of other female directors remains to be seen. According to The Centre for the Study in Film and Television, the percentage of top films directed by women has remained static at around 7 to 9 per cent over the past 25 years.

'We're running in place. There's been no progress since 1987,' the center's executive director, Martha Lauzen, told The Los Angeles Times.