Creatively Speaking (TM) On The Air

Tell it Like it Is: Black Independent Filmmaking in NYC 1968-1986

The Film Society of Lincoln Center – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and Walter Reade Theater 

Friday, February 6th – Thursday, February 19th 

Tonight’s program highlights the opening night film, “Losing Ground” by Kathleen Collins.

Guests include co-producer and director of cinematography, Ronald Gray and Nina Collins, daughter of the late Kathleen Collins.

Ronald Gray is a filmmaker, musician and photographer. Working in film, he has been a producer, director, cinematographer and editor. His first film was the multi-award-winning Transmagnifican Dambamuality (1976), which also received two Creative Arts Program grants and one American Film Institute grant. Gray collaborated with Kathleen Collins as co-producer, cinematographer and co-editor on The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy and Losing Ground. 

Nina Collins' mother, Kathleen Collins’s film career began in 1972. She was working at Channel Thirteen as an editor when she met Ronald Gray. Rejected by the WNET filmmaker-training program, he crashed and sat in on the course anyway, and that’s where they first met. A couple years later Ronald heard that Kathleen was teaching at City College. The first class he took with her was in the Speech department, where the assignment was to analyze how three speeches by Malcolm X changed over time.