“Nobody would give any money to a black woman to direct a film. It was probably the most discouraging time of my life.”
By Lucie Elliott Essays (2018) Expansive Territories: Remembering Kathleen Collins
At the time of her death in 1988, Collins left behind many projects including the screenplay, “Conversations with Julie;” a film musical she wrote with Michael D. Minard entitled “A Summer Diary;” her sixth stage play, “Waiting for Jane;” and an unfinished draft of her first novel, Lollie: A Suburban Tale. She was just 46 years old. One of the first black American women to produce a feature-length film, she is considered to have “changed the face and content of the black womanist film.” Collins’s work is significant in that it conveys images of people of color, particularly women, in ways that even now are rarely seen in popular culture. She challenged stereotypes and explored the interlocking oppressions of gender, race, and class. via kathleencollins.org
Kathleen Collins (March 18, 1942 – September 18, 1988) was an African-American poet, playwright, writer, filmmaker, director, civil rights activist, and educator from Jersey City, New Jersey. Her two feature narratives—The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) and Losing Ground (1982)—furthered the range of Black women’s films. Although Losing Ground was denied large-scale exhibition, it was among the first films created by a Black woman deliberately designed to tell a story intended for popular consumption, with a feature-length narrative structure. Collins thus paved the way for Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) to become the first feature-length narrative film created by a Black woman to be placed in commercial distribution. Influenced by Lorraine Hansberry, she wrote about “African Americans as human subjects and not as mere race subjects” [emphasis in the original]. via Wikipedia
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This is video of Kathleen Collins talking at Howard University in 1984. Milestone Films and the estate of Kathleen Collins is glad to make this available to the public to further the studies of this great artist.
Art by Women - Women in Arts #PalianShow 
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