Kathryn Bigelow is an American female filmmaker known for making, often violent, dramatic movies. Bigelow had her starts in the art scene as a painter at the San Francisco Art Institute before moving to New York and studying filmmaking at Columbia University. Kathryn Bigelow is known for making films such as, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. For the latter film, Bigelow is the first and only woman to have won the Academy Award for Best Director. Despite her accomplishments as a woman in a primarily male-dominated field, Bigelow frequently refuses to acknowledge her gender when discussing her success.