Losing Ground (1982 film)

Losing Ground is a semiautobiographical 1982 American drama film written and directed by Kathleen Collins, and starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn and Duane Jones. It is the first feature-length drama directed by an African-American woman since the 1920s and won First Prize at the Figueira da Foz International Film Festival in Portugal.

In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress 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 does not value her work in academia compared to his own 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 sexually harassing 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

 * Seret Scott as Sara Rogers
 * Bill Gunn as Victor
 * Duane Jones as Duke
 * Billie Allen 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 and in Nyack, Piermont and Haverstraw in Rockland County, New York. 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 1983, the Museum of Modern Art screened it as part of a Cineprobe series.

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, spurring critical and popular interest in the film. Critics raved about the film; Richard Brody of The New Yorker 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 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 released the film on DVD and Blu-ray.

Losing Ground is currently streaming via the Criterion Channel.