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By reinstituting 10 best picture nominees, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences set out to shake up its 82nd annual awards show and, in the process, ended up making history.

Summit's "The Hurt Locker," with just $14.7 million in domestic grosses, captured a leading six Oscars on Sunday night and defied the odds to emerge as best picture -- defeating five movies that had grossed more than $100 million each domestically, including Fox's "Avatar," the top-grossing movie of all time.

In fact, though the 10 nominees brought a number of studio movies to the party, the indies still ruled with Fox Searchlight's "Crazy Heart" and Lionsgate's "Precious" also winning key awards.

As part of "Locker's" triumphant night, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to receive a directing Oscar, which was presented to her by Barbra Streisand, who appeared to savor the envelope-opening since her own efforts to break down barriers for female directors had been ignored by the Academy in an earlier era.

"There is no other way to describe it, it's the moment of a lifetime," Bigelow said, drawing a deep breath as she accepted her trophy.

"Locker's" success was all the more dramatic given that Hollywood's previous efforts to portray the war in Iraq had drawn mixed critical responses.

Bigelow made a special point of dedicating her directing win to "the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world. And may they come home safe."

Eleventh-hour controversies -- some real, some manufactured -- had surrounded "Locker." The Academy even took the unprecedented step of banning financier Nicolas Chartier from the awards after he sent out e-mails urging others to ignore "Avatar" and vote "Locker."