The 1982 independent film Losing Ground—which plays tomorrow at 7 PM at Columbia College’s Film Row Cinema—barely screened at all until Milestone Films premiered a restored version earlier this year. It’s easily among the most important cinematic rediscoveries of 2015. One of the first narrative features written and directed by an African-American woman, it exhibits a sensibility that’s closer in spirit to the casually wise naturalism of Jean Renoir or Eric Rohmer than much in the American film canon. Writer-director Kathleen Collins addresses some major questions about being alive (How do we find fulfillment? Does personal growth occur intellectually or through raw experience?), yet Losing Ground isn’t a heavy movie; it’s relaxed, unpretentious, and sometimes even funny. Unfortunately, it’s the only feature Collins lived to make.
The kindness Collins refers to comes through in her filmmaking. Everyone who appears onscreen in Losing Ground is granted a certain sympathy, even the occasionally callous Victor. Collins doesn’t tell us exactly what to think about her characters—she favors plainspoken, long-take medium shots that let behavior shape the flow of the action. (She also favors vibrant color combinations that suggest a living painting.) As a result Collins imbues her subjects with a fair amount of mystery: one comes to approach the characters as philosophical puzzles, an interpretation that mirrors how the characters take on their intellectual pursuits.
