Women Make Waves International Film Festival

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    Losing Ground

    Kathleen Collins 1982 USA Fiction color 86min English Blu-ray
    Losing Ground is one of the first feature films written and directed by an African-American woman filmmaker, and a groundbreaking romance exploring women’s sexuality, modern marriage, and the life of artists and scholars. A great one that firmly belongs in the canon of American independent cinema in the 1980s, but at a time when black professionals were rarely portrayed in mainstream media, Losing Ground was not released theatrically. The film centers on a philosophy professor Sara and her painter husband Victor . The couple’s summer idyll becomes complicated as Sara struggles to research the philosophical and religious meaning of ecstatic experience and to discover it for herself.

    Director

    Kathleen Collins

    Born in 1942, raised in Jersey City, and educated at Skidmore and the Sorbonne, Kathy Collins was an activist with SNCC during the Civil Rights Movement who went on to carve out a career for herself as a playwright and filmmaker during a time when black women were rarely seen in those roles. She died young, at age 46, from breast cancer. Her most known work is the film Losing Ground, her two plays, In the Midnight Hour, and The Brothers.

    Director's Statement ▾

    Kathleen Collins

    1982 Losing Ground

    1980 The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy

    Directed by Kathleen Collins

    Script by Kathleen Collins

    Cinematography by Ronald K. Gray

    Music by Michael Minard

    Editing: Ronald K. Gray, Kathleen Collins

    Choreography: Pepsi Bethel

    Producer: Eleanor Charles

    Milestone Films

    milefilms@gmail.com

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