THE CINEMA OF KATHRYN BIGELOW

Kathryn Bigelow has undoubtedly been one of Hollywood's most significant female filmmakers, well known in popular terms for films such as Point Break and Blue Steel, yet she remains relatively unexplored in academia. Soundbites about women and guns and speculation about the role of ex-husband James Cameron in her career have often helped obscure rather than elucidate an understanding of her work and reputation. This collection explores how Bigelow can be seen to provide a point of intersection across a whole range of issues at the forefront of contemporary film studies and the transformation of Hollywood into a post-classical cinema machine, with a particular emphasis on her most ambitious and controversial picture to date, Strange Days. Her place within New Hollywood is as a filmmaker who blurs genre conventions, reinscribes gender identites and produces a breathless cinema of attractions. This important study is therefore a timely appraisal of this most significant film director.

January 2003
192 pages

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Sean Redmond is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and a contributor to Contemporary North American Film Directors (2002) and the editor of Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader (2004).

Deborah Jermyn is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Surrey, Roehampton, UK, and a contributor to Contemporary North American Film Directors (2002) and Screen Methods: Comparative Readings in Film Studies (2005).

‘This compilation is destined to become a reading-list staple.’
– Sight and Sound 

'The first, long-awaited book-length study of one of the most visionary directors in contemporary Hollywood … This comprehensive, wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection explores Bigelow's controversial and utterly modern work from a variety of perspectives.'
– Laura Rascaroli, National University of Cork

'Surely the only director to have successfully broken into the patriarchal stronghold of contemporary Hollywood … At last, we have a collection which discusses her entire oeuvre, not only the extraordinary Point Break but also the flawed and equally significant Strange Days.'
– Pamela Church Gibson, The London Institute

'More a preliminary survey of this enticing career than a set of conclusions, this diverse book of essays positions Bigelow on the cusp of the mainstream and the experimental, the border between action cinema and melodrama, the fault lines between men and women ... To look closely at Kathryn Bigelow's career'
– The Bindery

'All essays corroborate the near impossibility of compartmentalising/labelling Bigelow's work, which simultaneously challenges and uses cinematic conventions, and Bigelow herself.. Essential!'
– Choice

'An intriguing, thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of essays on the work of director Kathryn Bigelow ... The essays in the collection provide valuable insights and a new way of looking at Bigelow's body of work. What is most valuable about the compilation is that, because the essays cover the span of Bigelow's directorial career, it gives readers a comprehensive perspective of the themes and issues that appear repeatedly in her films ... [the book] has inspired questions and a desire to look further into Bigelow's works.'
– www.cercles.com

‘The wide range of essays is a welcome contribution into the work of a director who is one of the most under-appreciated, misrepresented and misunderstood both within and outside the film industry.'

– Film International

'The wide range of essays in the collection offers a fascinating insight into Bigelow's work. There is a clearly structured and logical approach to the material for those wishing to investigate her work further ... What emerges from this important and scholarly text is a picture of a director whose intentions are often distorted, who is clearly misunderstood and misrepresented within Hollywood and academia, but who must surely be recognised as a contemporary auteur ... It is evident in this welcome and worthy text that Bigelow remains one of Hollywood's most contradictory and complicated characters.'
– www.popmatters.com

'A book about Kathryn Bigelow has been long overdue, but recognition of her talent has at last emerged in the shape of Wallflower Press's The Cinema of Kathryn Bieglow: Hollywood Transgressor, a collection of essays exploring different facets of her work ... In this book much emphasis is placed on her position as a female auteur in a male-based industry and her decision to work in "traditionally" male genres – notably the action film. What emerges is a portrait of a sound and reasoned filmmaker who is unafraid to court controversy, or push the boundaries of what is technologically possible ... Split into two main parts, the essay approach leads to a variety of perspectives on Bieglow's work ... The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow is a welcome study into the work of one of Hollywood's most underappreciated directors ... It provides a valuable springboard from which to launch further research.'
– www.kamera.co.uk 

‘This collection is an impressive and wide ranging study of Kathryn Bigelow's work, and an important addition to the rather small body of work, which focuses on women directing film. The collection ... assembles a selection of compelling arguments for Bigelow's status as transgressive auteur, and maintains an awareness of the problematic nature of the labels that can and often are applied to her work. On the whole, the book generates a sense of knowing what it wants to do and doing it.' 

– Kate Adams, www.film-philosophy.com