Kathleen Collins was one of the first Black women to direct movies in Hollywood, and we can still learn from her

By Vanessa Willoughby  via https://hellogiggles.com

Too often, pop culture flattens Black women into tired stereotypes. The white gaze turns Black women into background static at best, reductive and dangerous caricatures at worst. In many cases, Black women are effectively and completely erased from the narrative, as though we never existed in the first place. For writer, director, producer, and playwright Kathleen Collins, creating art—whether that be through the medium of film, theater, or novel—posed an opportunity to defy the conventions imposed upon Black womanhood. Collins’s characters aren’t props or hypersexualized punching bags. In plays like In The Midnight Hour (1981) and The Brothers (1982), and in films like The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) and Losing Ground (1982), her characters are free to experience and embrace the unbridled spectrum of human emotions.

Losing Ground, which tells the story of a Black woman philosophy professor and her discomfort in her marriage, is considered one of the first American feature-length …

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