Nina Lorez Collins, daughter of the late Kathleen Collins, whose masterwork LOSING GROUND (1982) was the great rediscovered film of 2015, will read selections from a new book of her mother’s writing entitled NOTES FROM A BLACK WOMAN’S DIARY (2019). The reading will take place April 3, 6PM, at the IU Libraries Screening Room, Wells 048, and be followed by a screening of the film.
NOTES FROM A BLACK WOMAN’S DIARY
A stunning collection of fiction, diary entries, screenplays, and scripts by the brilliant African-American artist and filmmaker. Relatively unknown during her life, the artist, filmmaker, and writer Kathleen Collins emerged on the literary scene in 2016 with the posthumous publication of the short story collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? Said Zadie Smith, “To be this good and yet to be ignored is shameful, but her rediscovery is a great piece of luck for us.” That rediscovery continues in the book, which spans genres to reveal the breadth and depth of the late author’s talent. The compilation is anchored by more of Collins’s short stories, which, striking and powerful in their brevity, reveal the ways in which relationships are both formed and come undone. It is in Collins’s raw and prescient diaries that her nascent ideas about race, gender, marriage, and motherhood first play out on the page.
LOSING GROUND (1982), dir. Kathleen Collins, tells the story of an accomplished and beloved philosophy professor, Sara Rogers (Seret Scott), who is married to a vivacious artist, Victor (Bill Gunn). Their marriage becomes strained by Victor’s obsession with painting a Puerto Rican woman, Celia, who lives in the town where Sara and Victor are living for the summer. Meanwhile, Sara agrees to appear in a film being made by one her students in which she plays opposite to Duke (Duane Jones). Her’s and Duke’s performance as lovers for the student film moves ambiguously, back and forth, across the threshold between real life and fiction. The film is a subtle and sincere look at desire and the exasperating tendencies of love, particularly amidst the complexities of gender, race and ethnicity, power, and art.
*This event is free, but ticketed, and open to the public. Click here for tickets.
*The Screening Room temperature tends to run cool, so please remember to bring a jacket or sweater.
*No food or drink is permitted in the Screening Room.
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