Well, this is a pretty nifty ascent for a director whose seven previous features received not a sniff of an Oscar nod between them. Four months after becoming the first female Best Director winner in Oscar history, Kathryn Bigelow has been named one of three first-time electees to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors.
Joining Bigelow are two other previous Oscar champs: documentarian Michael Moore (I guess AMPAS brass don’t hold a grudge over that acceptance speech) and one of the greatest editors in the history of the medium, Anne V. Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia,” “Out of Sight”). Congratulations all round.
To give you an idea of the exclusivity of the honor, AMPAS has only 43 Governors in total — three for each of their 15 branches (which the exception of Makeup, which has a single representative). Bigelow therefore joins Martha Coolidge and Edward Zwick in leading the Directors branch. Interesting that this long male-skewing branch should now have two female Governors.
•