''Losing Ground'' is a semiautobiographicalSterritt, Davi

TCM.com Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasti ...

1982 film written and directed by

Kathleen Collins Kathleen Collins (March 18, 1942 – September 18, 1988) (also known as Kathleen Conwell, Kathleen Conwell Collins or Kathleen Collins Prettyman) was an African-American poet, playwright, writer, filmmaker, director, civil rights activist, and ...

starring

Seret Scott Seret Scott (born September 1, 1949) is an American actress, director, and playwright, best known for her roles in the films '' Losing Ground'' and ''Pretty Baby'', as well as guest appearances on the televisions shows '' The Equalizer'', ''Miami ...

, Bill Gunn, and

Duane Jones Duane L. Jones (April 11, 1937July 22, 1988) was an American actor and theatre director, best known for his lead role as Ben in the 1968 horror film ''Night of the Living Dead''. He was later director of the Maguire Theater at the State Universi ...

. It is the first feature-length drama directed by an African American woman since the 1920s and won First Prize at the Figueroa International Film Festival in Portugal. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

Sara Rogers is a well-loved philosophy professor who teaches courses on logic. She is married to Victor, a successful painter. To celebrate the sale of one of his paintings to a museum, Victor decides to rent a house for the summer where he can paint. Sara is annoyed at his plan because she wanted to spend the summer in the city researching a paper she is writing on ecstatic experiences and knows that her access to books will be limited in a small town. She feels as though Victor doesn't value her work in academia compared to his work as an artist. Nevertheless, after finding a house they both adore she agrees to go with him for the summer. At the rented house Victor becomes obsessed with painting local women, befriending one in particular, a Puerto Rican woman named Celia. Jealous, Sara goes back to the city for a few days to act in a student film that one of her students has begged her to participate in. She meets Duke, the filmmaker's uncle, who plays her love interest in the movie and who is immediately attracted to her. Sara brings Duke up to the rented house, and Victor is immediately jealous of him. Victor is also jealous when his friend and mentor Carlos starts flirting with Celia. In the morning, seeing Victor aggressively playing around with Celia, Sara grows angry and tells him to stop his flirting in front of her. Leaving him, she talks to her mother saying she feels out of control and on shaky ground, despite being known for her steady, contemplative nature. Returning to the city, Sara completes her final scenes for the film. Victor goes to find her and arrives to watch in time as her character shoots Duke's character for being unfaithful to her.

Cast

as Sara Rogers * Bill Gunn as Victor *

as Duke *

Billie Allen Billie Allen (January 13, 1925 – December 29, 2015) was an American actress, theater director, dancer and entertainer. Allen was one of the first black actors and performers to appear on television and stage in the United States, at a time when ...

as Leila, Sara's Mother * Gary Bolling as George * Noberto Kerner as Carlos, Victor's friend * Maritza Rivera as Celia

Production

''Losing Ground'' was filmed in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and in Nyack, Piermont and

Haverstraw Haverstraw is a town in Rockland County, New York, United States, located north of the Town of Clarkstown and the Town of Ramapo; east of Orange County; south of the Town of Stony Point; and west of the Hudson River. The town runs from the we ...

Rockland County, New York Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. It is about from the Bronx at their closest points. The county's population, as of t ...

. The film had a budget of $125,000.

Response and legacy

''Losing Ground'' did not have a theatrical release, and thus never played outside of the film festival circuit during Collins' lifetime — the director died in 1988 at the age of 46. The film was largely overlooked at that time. In 2015, the film was restored by the filmmaker's daughter, Nina Collins, and reissued. In the same year, the film screened at

Film Society of Lincoln Center Film at Lincoln Center, previously known as the Film Society of Lincoln Center until 2019,Aridi, Sara (April 28, 2019).. ''The New York Times''. nytimes.com. Retrieved April 29, 2019. is a film society based in New York City, United States. Fo ...

, spurring critical and popular interest in the film. Critics raved about the film;

Richard Brody Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999. Education Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He first ...

of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' wrote that "had it screened widely in its time, it would have marked film history." A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that the film "feels like news, like a bulletin from a vital and as-yet-unexplored dimension of reality." In The Stranger,

Charles Mudede Charles Tonderai Mudede (; born February 8, 1969) is a Zimbabwean writer, filmmaker,Patricia O'Brien (a.k.a. OlallieLake)Charles Mudede short documentary film. Uploaded to YouTube 2007-07-27. Accessed 2012-12-20. and leftwing cultural critic. Tho ...

described the film as being "one of the most important and original American films of the second half of the 20th century." In 2016,

Milestone Films Milestone Film and Video is an independent film distribution company, founded in 1990 in the United States by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller. The company researches and distributes cinematographic material from around the world, including silent film, ...

released the film on DVD and Blu-ray. ''Losing Ground'' is currently streaming via the

Criterion Channel The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

.A Legacy and a Landmark - The Criterion Channel
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References

External links