Losing Ground

Director: Kathleen Collins

1982 / 86min / DCP

Teacher, writer, and filmmaker Collins’s semi-autobiographical independent film depicts a kind of character seldom seen in mainstream films of the ’80s or, for that matter, of today: the Black middle-class woman intellectual. Buttoned-down philosophy professor Sara (Seret Street), struggling with the philandering of her artist husband (Bill Gunn) and her own inability to intellectually grasp the idea of ecstatic experience, impetuously agrees to act in a student film opposite a disconcertingly dashing leading man (Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones), and finds herself suddenly teetering on the brink of abandoning a lifetime of rectitude.

“One of the first feature-length films directed by a Black American woman, Losing Ground sees Collins explore love, race, and gender through the story of a married couple at a crossroads of their lives during one summer in New York as each embarks on new romantic and emotional journeys. Losing Ground was filmed primarily in New York with a final production cost of $125,000. Despite garnering some international acclaim, the film received little notice in the US, screening only once in 1983 as part of MoMA’s Cineprobe series. Collins, who was also a civil rights activist, would write plays during the 1980s but died of breast cancer in 1988. Almost 25 years after the film’s release, Collins’s daughter Nina rescued her mother’s original negatives; they were then restored and re-released in 2015, introducing a whole new generation to a landmark of independent cinema.” —Caryn Coleman

Introduction by Caryn Coleman, Founder of The Future of Film is Female on Saturday, January 25th