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