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Some Kathryn Bigelow News

posted by Women & Hollywood
Friday, July 9, 2010 at 12:03am EDT

Here’s why awards matter. Kathryn Bigelow who we all know won the best director Oscar this year is receiving two different honors.

Even though she has a distinguished body of work I doubt she would have gotten either had she not kicked butt on The Hurt Locker.

First, she was elected to the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. The board of governors totals 43 people from all the branches in the Academy.

She joins Martha Coolidge and Ed Zwick as representatives of the directing branch. The directing branch is one of the only ones that has two women and a guy. Maybe the two of them can get some more women into the directing branch of the Academy so that we will see more women nominated.

This is progress.

Bigelow will also be honored by The Museum of Modern Art in NYC on November 10, 2010, and in June 2011 the Museum will show a retrospective of her work.

Here’s some info from the press release:

As the first female director to garner directing awards by the Academy, BAFTA, and the DGA, Bigelow creates immersive movies that leave the viewer simultaneously exhilarated and affected, thinking, and feeling, while transforming the language of genre films to serve her content.

Within the Museum’s collection, a selection of Bigelow’s films are represented, including Point Break, Blue Steel (1989), Near Dark, The Loveless (1982), and The Set-Up (1978). In June 2011, MoMA’s Department of Film will present a retrospective of Bigelow’s entire career with screenings of all of her feature films. In conjunction with the retrospective, the Museum has acquired Bigelow’s paper archive which documents all of her film projects from The Set-Up to The Hurt Locker, from pre-production research through production notes to post-release publicity and press materials. The archive contains both process and creative documentation such as storyboards, scripts, filming schedules, location scouting reports, and casting notes. The collection also includes unrealized scripts and other projects.

Congrats.