Losing Ground

Sara Rogers (Seret Scott) is a popular  professor of philosophy. She is married to the egocentric artist Victor (Bill Gunn) and does research on the idea of ecstasy – a status in which Victor loses himself easily whereas Sara can only conceptualise it on paper and look at it from a rational distance… 

Spending the summer together in upstate New York and watching Victor going on just another of his dionysian trips, Sara decides for once to listen to her heart instead of her head. 

Funny, – Collins herself described the film as a comedy about a young woman who takes herself too seriously – super well written and very personal Losing Ground is a wonderful film that should have gained its status right upon its release. But when it came out in 1982 there was little interest in the film. Distributors didn’t want to take the risk since a film made by a black woman only spoke to a very ‘niche’ audience. And after a single screening the film disappeared.
Kathleen Collins passed away only a few years later, in 1988. She was only 46 years old but renown internationally as a playwright, filmmaker and professor of film history.  It was her daughter who rescued the old negative of Losing Ground 25 years later and created the beautiful new digital master of the film which Milestone brought out in 2015.