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Past Events

Black History Month: Kathleen Collins Films

The Historical Society Rockland County Invites You to Enjoy Rivertown Film's Special Online Screenings of

Losing Ground and The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy
Films by Kathleen Collins

When: February 19–25, 2021
Where: Rivertown Film Online
Price: $10 (single price for both films)

In honor of Black History Month, Rivertown Film is showing two groundbreaking films by Piermont's Kathleen Collins (1942–1988), Losing Ground and The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy, during the week of February 19–25:

• Losing Ground (1982, 50 min.), called a cinematic masterwork by the New Yorker magazine, is very much an independent film created with resources at hand, serving as a testimony to the strength of a remarkable, formerly unsung community of artists living and working in Rockland County during the 1970s and 1980s. Actress Seret Scott sets the tone in the first scene as a beloved philosophy professor teaching a lesson on the wartime roots of existentialism, the absurdity of existence, and Jean-Paul Sartre and his play No Exit. The film, which features recognizable Rockland locations, upends every stereotype of black American life in the 1980s.

• The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980, 86 min.), Collins's first film, is based on a story from Henry H. Roth’s novel The Cruz Chronicle. Three rambunctious brothers, with the ghost of their late father hovering over them, are engaged by an aging widow to “restore” her grand but seriously faded Victorian mansion overlooking the Hudson River. The film is set in Haverstraw and in the former Bennett-Deyrup mansion in Nyack.

Losing Ground and The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy will stream from February 19 to 25 for the single price of $10. Tickets can be purchased by at Rivertown Films' website RivertownFilms.org; ticket buyers have until February 25 to watch the films, no matter when they buy the ticket, and can stop and start viewing during the entire period.

In addition, a live panel discussion about art, movies, Rockland history, and more will be held on Zoom on Wednesday, February 24, 2021, at 7 pm. The discussion will be moderated by Bill Batson (Nyack Sketch Log), and the panelists will include Collins’s daughter, Nina, who reintroduced her mother's writing and films to the world; her son, Emilio, who recently moved back to Nyack; the actress and theater director Seret Scott, who played the primary role in Losing Ground, and Sam Waymon, who played her husband; and Michael Minard, music teacher at Nanuet High School who composed the scores for both films. Registration for the Zoom discussion is separate from the film screening and is available by clicking here.

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The Historical Society of Rockland County is proud to co-sponsor these screenings with Rivertown Film and its additional community partners: Nyack Library, Nyack NAACP, and Historical Society of the Nyacks.

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