STACK #166 Aug 2018

DVD & BD FEATURE

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SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

Female Filmmakers

1987 NEAR DARK

1990 BLUE STEEL

A former artist turned visual supremo filmmaker, this Oscar-winner can more than hold her own in a male-dominated arena. K athryn Bigelow was the first woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win the KATHRYN BIGELOW

1991 POINT BREAK

A gritty western/horror hybrid, Near Dark is not just one of the best vampire films ever made, it also challenged genre conventions, which Bigelow would continue to do throughout her career. Along with Near Dark , her next three films Blue Steel (1990), Point Break (1991) and Strange Days (1995) – the latter produced and co-written by her ex-husband, James Cameron – further revealed her commitment to visual, action- driven storytelling. While her films never flinch from depicting violence, Bigelow doesn't condone it, rather perceiving it as a fact of life. She's interested in presenting the truth, and the social environment that can lead to violent acts. Bigelow considers filmmaking a great opportunity to comment on the world we live in, and is unafraid to tackle topical and challenging material – millennial angst in Strange Days (1995), the Iraq War in The Hurt Locker (2008), the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and racism in Detroit (2017). "Once you've opened the window on topical material, its very hard to close it," she has said. "Holding up a contemporary mirror is more attractive to me now than ever."

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." Born in 1951 in San Carlos, California, Bigelow was an avid student of painting, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1972 before earning a masters degree in film theory and criticism. Her first foray into filmmaking was the short film The Set-Up (1978), and she followed that three years later with her feature debut, The Loveless – a biker movie starring Willem Dafoe. However, it was her second feature, Near Dark (1987), that made critics, audiences and Hollywood sit up and realise that a ferocious new talent had arrived on the scene.

1995 STRANGE DAYS

Oscar for Best Director (for her 2010 war drama The Hurt Locker ) – a fact that speaks volumes about the disparity between male and female directors in Hollywood. Indeed, Bigelow has spoken out on numerous occasions about the difficulties facing female filmmakers; her most famous quote on the subject appearing in MIT's newspaper The Tech in 1990. "If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore it 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

2002 K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER

2008 THE HURT LOCKER

It's a travesty. I feel like it's trending in the right direction, but it's painfully slow, and where's that inequity coming from? That's a big and complicated sociological question. – Kathryn Bigelow, on the lack of female filmmakers in Hollywood

2012 ZERO DARK THIRTY

2017 DETROIT

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AUGUST 2018

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