Kathleen Collins
Photo Source: kathleencollins.org
Country: United States
Location: Jersey City, New Jersey
ABOUT
Kathleen Collins (March 18, 1942– September 18, 1988), born Kathleen Conwell, was an African-American filmmaker, author and playwright who was best known for her film Losing Ground (1982), which was one of the first Black woman-directed feature films to be released in the United States.
Biography by Jaedyn Griddine
Collins lived her entire life as a writer--and a decorated one at that. She won awards for poetry and speech in her youth, led the publication of her high school’s newspaper and yearbook, wrote pieces on hope and societal improvement and became class president in her first year of undergraduate studies at Skidmore college, and later won writing fellowships early-on in her filmmaking career. It is at Skidmore that Collins became politicized, which led to her participation in the Civil Rights Movement; two activists, Charles Sherrod and Charles Jones, visited her campus, and, after becoming friends, Collins joined them (along with many others) on a trip led by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Southwest Georgia Project to canvass and register Black voters in the state. Collins also joined the Albany Movement, another SNCC program for Black voters. During this time, Collins was arrested twice alongside her peers; they used some of their time in jail to continue their mission of raising awareness about voter registration with the other prisoners. She has even been suspected to be the source of inspiration for Dr. King’s use of the famous phrase, “I have a dream.” Her tireless work during this time has, however, been vastly overlooked.
Images of writer and filmmaker, Kathleen Collins. Sources: Smithsonian African American Film Festival, The Story Bar, and Kathleen Collins’ Website.
After her undergrad years, Collins became a French teacher in Massachusetts, took night classes at Harvard graduate school, and, eventually, completed her Masters in French Literature at Paris-Sorbonne University; it is there where a film class sparked her interest in filmmaking. Continuing her lifelong devotion to writing, Collins began writing screenplays and stories, and she kept a journal that she constantly added to. She also added another chapter to her own story with the births of her two children, Nina and Emilio. She had to juggle her creative work with single motherhood and depression, which resulted in a turbulent yet colorful and immensely loving experience for her children. During this time, Collins began building her filmmaking career, completing her two films, The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) and Losing Ground (1982), receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and becoming close with Lorraine Hansberry (playwright, A Raisin in the Sun), who would later become the most influential figure in Collins’ career. The work that Collins created during this time told stories of male control, marital issues, and creative and intellectual fulfillment, all which reflected what Collins was experiencing in her own life. Her work also explored class struggle and race, albeit subtly. Above all, however, Collins’ work can be characterized by the in-depth development of empowered, intelligent, creative and self-reflective Black women who served as principal characters in her stories.
Video of Kathleen Collins speaking at Howard University in 1984. Source: Kathleen Collins Website/Milestone Channel.
Collins’ life was, unfortunately, cut short by her long battle with cancer, which she dealt with mostly on her own, hiding it from her children and the public, only writing of it in her personal diary. Consequently, Collins left behind an extensive amount of unpublished stories and films that never saw a theatrical release. This, however, is not a story about sickness and loss; this is a story about creativity, motherhood, activism and artistic passion. And, thankfully, because of her daughter’s tireless effort to unearth what her mother left behind, this story can be told and observed today: Nina published a collection of her mother’s short stories in Whatever Happened To Interracial Love? (2016), as well as another collection of stories, diary entries and scripts in Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary (2019). Literary magazine ‘A Public Space’ has also published her short story Interiors, which tells a fictional rendition of Collins’ divorce from her first husband, in their 2015 issue, a re-release of Losing Ground (1982) in 2015 saw much theatrical success and acclaim, and Nina has donated an archive of her mother’s work to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Sources:
Daughter Of African-American Filmmaker Asks, What Happened To Kathleen Collins? by Scott Simon
Preserving Kathleen Collins’ Legacy: An Interview with Nina Lorez Collins by Yasmina Price
How Kathleen Collins's Daughter Kept Her Late Mother's Career Alive by Nina Lorez Collins
Kathleen Collins’ Whatever Happened To ‘Interracial Love’ by Dwight Garner
