Review by Gary Tooze

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• The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980, 0:49:15.786, 29.98 Mbps - Color) Kathleen Collins and Ronald Gray's first film with optional commentary with Kathleen Collins and Henry H. Roth
• Video Interviews with Ronald K. Gray (46:33), Seret Scott (40:17) and Nina Lorez Collins (26:24)
• An Interview with Kathleen Collins by Phyllis R. Klotman (1982, Color, 22:42, Courtesy of Indiana University Black Film Archive)
• Transmagnifican Dambamuality (1976, 7:04, B&W) Gray's celebrated lost student film

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Description: At the time of her death from cancer in 1988, Kathleen Collins was just 46 years old, but she was already an internationally renowned playwright, a popular professor (at New York’s City College) and a successful independent filmmaker.

Her second film, Losing Ground tells the story of a marriage of two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives. Sara Rogers, a black professor of philosophy, is embarking on an intellectual quest to understand “ecstasy” just as her painter husband Victor sets off on a more earthy exploration of joy.

Celebrating a recent museum sale, Victor decides to rent a country house where he can return to more realism after years working as an abstract expressionist. Away from the city, the couple’s summer idyll becomes complicated by Sara’s research and by Victor’s involvement with a young model. When one of her students casts Sara as the woman scorned in a film version of the song “Frankie and Johnny,” she experiences a painful emotional awakening. While dealing with strong individuals and feelings, the film is also charming--Collins described it as a comedy about a young woman who takes herself too seriously.

One of the very first fictional features by an African-American woman, Losing Ground remains a stunning and powerful work of art. Accomplished actors Seret Scott (who appeared in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby and Ntozake Shange’s play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf”), Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess) and Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) star.

Funny, brilliant and personal, Losing Ground should have ranked high in the canon of indie cinema. But the early 1980s was not an easy time for women or independent filmmakers and the film was never theatrically released. It was shown once on PBS’s American Playhouse, and then it effectively disappeared. Twenty-five years after her mother’s death, Nina Collins rescued the original negative and created a beautiful new digital master of her mother’s film. Losing Ground now looks and sounds as fresh, bracing and complex as it did when it was first filmed. It is a testament to Kathleen Collins’ incredible talent and a lasting treasure of African American and women’s cinema.

 

 

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Milestone stack the release firstly offering a commentary track by Professors LaMonda Horton-Stallings and Terri Francis giving deeper insight into the film's subtle features, intents and themes. There is also a 2015 re-release theatrical trailer also on the first Blu-ray.

The second Blu-ray contains the 50-minute, 1980, The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy; Kathleen Collins and Ronald Gray's first film and it also includes an optional commentary with Collins and Henry H. Roth discussing the production roots etc. We get video interviews with cinematographer Ronald K. Gray for over 3/4 of an hour, director / actor/ playwright Seret Scott for 40-minutes and Nina Lorez Collins - daughter the late writer director Kathleen Collins - shedding light in a few areas about the film's rediscovery, restoration and her mother for just shy of 1/2 an hour. There is also a vintage 22-minute interview with Kathleen Collins by Phyllis R. Klotman from 1982 and Transmagnifican Dambamuality Ronald K. Gray's celebrated, 1976, 7-minute lost student film about the struggle of a teenage boy to assert himself amid the frenetic activity of a large family.

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BOTTOM LINE:
As I was watching Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground - before I read any reviews - I thought of Cassavetes - inexpensive, indie, cinema vérité-leaning straying from some of the bleak and hollow forms of many more-modern artistic expressions - deep human emotions. Milestone should really be highly commended for bringing this to Blu-ray as they did with Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason and The Connection. I doubt I would ever be exposed to Losing Ground or The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy if not for their efforts! We should feel so fortunate to be able to see these films looking so authentic in the comfort of our home theaters where you might be fortunate to have the opportunity to see it in a very limited Festival run or retrospective. It's brilliant, rarely viewed, and unique, cinema and it gets our highest recommendation!