Kathryn Bigelow was born in the United States in 1951. She started her career as a plastic artist and majored in Fine Arts with a special focus in painting at the San Francisco Institute of Arts. She got her master’s degree in film at the Columbia University, where she studied theory and criticism and joined the Art & Language collective, created with the goal of allying theoretical concerns with artistic production. Bigelow codirected, with Monty Montgomery, her first feature film, The Loveless (1981), in which her desire of manipulating genre conventions is already present. This desire would likewise inform her following features, more commercial in nature, like Blue Steel (1989), Point Break (1991) and Strange Days (1995). In 2008, she directed The Hurt Locker, winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, and with which Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. Bigelow describes her style as an exploration of the kinetic potential of cinema and her films are characterised by fast and abrupt action and considerable, but never gratuitous violence, always aligned with her theoretical interests.
Monty Montgomery was born in the United States in 1951. He co-directed his only film, The Loveless (1981), with Kathryn Bigelow and is best known for his work as a producer. In 1986, he joined Propaganda Films, one of the largest independent production companies of the 1980s and 90s. Montgomery began working with David Lynch, producing his series Twin Peaks (1989) and the film Wild at Heart, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990 and won the Palme d’Or. He also produced Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady in 1996. His first acting role was in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), where he made a brief appearance as “The Cowboy.”
