Occidental’s event series ‘Cinematheque,’ organized by the Media Arts & Culture (MAC) Department, kicked off with a screening of “Losing Ground,” presented by Nina Collins, daughter of the film’s director, Kathleen Collins and Adrienne Adams, ‘Cinematheque’ Programmer and Visiting Lecturer Sept. 5 in Choi Auditorium.
“Losing Ground” is one of the first feature-length films directed by a Black American woman. It was released in 1982, but the film never got a chance to show in the theaters. Filmmaker Kathleen Collins passed away from breast cancer in 1988, and “Losing Ground” was rarely screened throughout her time. Collins was 46 years old when she died and all of her works were kept by her daughter, Nina Collins.
“When this came out, distributors asked her, ‘Who are these people? This doesn’t make any sense,’ and no one would distribute it,” Collins said. “My mother was making these movies before the Cosby Show, before Vanessa Williams.”
According to Nina Collins’ website about her mother, Kathleen Collins was a poet, playwright, filmmaker, civil rights activist and educator. She served as a film professor at the City College of New York. “Losing Ground” was her second film and she also wrote short stories, screenplays and plays which were later published with the names “Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?” and “Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary” in 2016 and 2019.
According to promotional materials from the MAC department, the film stars Black actors Sera Scott and Bill Gunn. It tells the story of the troubled marriage of the young philosophy professor and her husband, a lifetime painter, as they explore different ideas of exhilaration.
Rose Le Goff (exchange student), a French language teaching assistant at Occidental, was a part of the event’s audience.
“I think it was an exciting movie in the way that I do not know what to expect at all. And the story slowly unravels, but there was nothing more than seeing how their characters are working out this relationship and how dysfunctional it is,” Le Goff said.
“Losing Ground” is the first of four films which will screen this year as a part of the MAC department’s yearly ‘Cinematheque’ series. The theme of this year’s program is “Analog@Oxy: Race, Sex, Technological Obsolescence,” and it is being co-presented with “Invisibility: Powers & Perils,” Oxy Arts’ Getty PST exhibition.
“We’re dealing with a film that was recorded in mono, not stereo. So with stereo, you will notice sort of this, surround sound almost or numerous channels. This one is, single channel,” Adams said.
Collins restored the “Losing Ground” film in 2015, many years since the film was released. Collins said in an interview with NPR that she had a really difficult time as an adult and faced a lot of anxiety and anger problems in her 20s. It was in her mid-30s that she started looking back at her mom’s works, helping her to realize and understand her real-life problems.
“I was really a mess, and I realized that I really needed to understand where I came from, what my parents were about, why they did what they did, why my mother made the choices she did and so I spent a good 10 years immersing myself in her work and really trying to get a handle on all of that.” Collins said. “I am a very different person in my 50s by far than I was in my 30s, and a much, much happier one.”
Tripp Ronon (first year), who attended the event, said the idea of reviewing one’s work from the older times brings the benefits of truth and meaningfulness to the present.
“I’ve realized how much films and art overall really [are] a reflection of the person making it. It’s a reflection of the artist. It’s also a reflection of the times, of the context in Black filmmaking, the context in technology, but especially the context of one’s own personal life. I think that is something I will have in mind in the future,” Ronon said.
The night of the event, Choi Auditorium was full of Occidental students and staff. After the screening of “Losing Ground,” Collins and Adams accepted questions from the audience.
“I love seeing how inspiring it is to young women today to see, to think about this woman who was working 40-50 years ago, completely in obscurity. And look what she did, and if she did that, then, what can you do now? So yeah, it’s very, very moving,” Collins said.
Contact Aung Myat Htet at ahtet@oxy.edu.
