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Director Stephanie Rothman was the first female to be awarded the Director's Guild of America fellowship while she was studying in the University of Southern California Department of Cinema in the '60s. Upon graduating, Rothman began doing second unit work at AIP and New World Studios for Roger Corman on his low-budget exploitation films. Her first film, also an exploitation film, was It's a Bikini World (1966). It was not an auspicious entry into the world of commercial cinema. However, with her subsequent five films, her reputation as a stylish, politically conscious filmmaker began to grow. In her 1970 film, The Student Nurses, produced by Corman for his recently established New World studios and co-written by Rothman, differed from other exploitation films in several regards: it depicted women in leading roles, parodied the genre at every turn, and covered issues like rape and abortion. In the late '60s Rothman and her husband Charles Swartz founded Dimension Pictures. Her next film, The Velvet Vampire (1971), while not as commercially successful as The Student Nurses, has become a cult hit. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Rothman did not move into mainstream cinema. Her last picture was The Working Girls in 1974. It was also the last picture from Dimension Studios, which dissolved after it was released.