[go: up one dir, main page]

    Release calendarTop 250 moviesMost popular moviesBrowse movies by genreTop box officeShowtimes & ticketsMovie newsIndia movie spotlight
    What's on TV & streamingTop 250 TV showsMost popular TV showsBrowse TV shows by genreTV news
    What to watchLatest trailersIMDb OriginalsIMDb PicksIMDb SpotlightFamily entertainment guideIMDb Podcasts
    EmmysSuperheroes GuideSan Diego Comic-ConSummer Watch GuideBest Of 2025 So FarDisability Pride MonthSTARmeter AwardsAwards CentralFestival CentralAll events
    Born todayMost popular celebsCelebrity news
    Help centerContributor zonePolls
For industry professionals
  • Language
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Watchlist
Sign in
  • Fully supported
  • English (United States)
    Partially supported
  • Français (Canada)
  • Français (France)
  • Deutsch (Deutschland)
  • हिंदी (भारत)
  • Italiano (Italia)
  • Português (Brasil)
  • Español (España)
  • Español (México)
Use app
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • FAQ
IMDbPro

Losing Ground

  • 1982
  • 1h 26m
IMDb RATING
6.6/10
1K
YOUR RATING
Original US poster designed by Adrian Rothschild
Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.
Play trailer2:04
1 Video
2 Photos
Psychological DramaQuirky ComedyComedyDrama

Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.

  • Director
    • Kathleen Collins
  • Writer
    • Kathleen Collins
  • Stars
    • Seret Scott
    • Bill Gunn
    • Duane Jones
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.6/10
    1K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Kathleen Collins
    • Writer
      • Kathleen Collins
    • Stars
      • Seret Scott
      • Bill Gunn
      • Duane Jones
    • 11User reviews
    • 18Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win total

    Videos1

    Official Trailer
    Trailer 2:04
    Official Trailer

    Photos1

    View Poster

    Top cast54

    Edit
    Seret Scott
    • Sara
    Bill Gunn
    Bill Gunn
    • Victor
    Duane Jones
    Duane Jones
    • Duke
    Billie Allen
    • Mother
    Gary Bolling
    • George
    Noberto Kerner
    • Carlos
    Maritza Rivera
    • Celia
    Zachary Minar
    • Male Student in Class
    Anthony McGowan
    • Other Student in Class
    Darryl Reilly
    • Other Student in Class
    Joe Garcia
    • Other Student in Class
    Clarence Branch Jr.
    • Man on Radio
    • (voice)
    Maureen Grady
    • Female Student in Office
    Deborah Tirelli
    • Real Estate Agent
    Marjorie Spring
    • Librarian
    Hilda Vargas
    • Celia's Mother
    Rose Zito
    • Gypsy
    Joseph B. Vasquez
    • Student Cameraman
    • Director
      • Kathleen Collins
    • Writer
      • Kathleen Collins
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews11

    6.61K
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10

    Featured reviews

    7steiner-sam

    The dialogue is very highbrow, making some of it stiff

    It's an art film about abstraction and relationships in an upper-middle-class African American context during a summer in the early 1980s in New York City and a summer home in upstate New York. Sara Rogers (Seret Scott) is a 35ish philosophy professor at an unnamed university. She lives in her head with a highly rational demeanor. Her husband, Victor (Bill Gunn), is a successful artist who has just sold a major work to a museum; he is much more emotional and unpredictable. Sara's mother, Leila (Billie Allen), is a stage actor still practicing her trade.

    Victor wants to celebrate the summer in upstate New York despite Sara's desire to continue working on a significant academic research project. They follow Victor's desire, and he begins to change his artistic vision, which includes a young Puerto Rican woman, Celia (Maritza Rivera). Meanwhile, a student in film studies talks Sara into participating in his thesis film project. There, Sara meets the student's uncle, Duke (Duane Jones), an older, experienced actor. These new relationships bring tension to Victor's and Sara's marriage and challenge their previous worldviews.

    "Losing Ground" was an art festival movie that never made a commercial circuit, though it's now seen as significant, as Kathleen Collins was an early African American female director. Though the student film project provides some relief, the dialogue is very highbrow in both philosophy and art. Scott and Gunn seem somewhat stiff, but that may be a factor in the script that doesn't always sound natural. Relationships in trouble is not a new movie theme, but "Losing Ground" is an interesting riff with some neat jazz providing background.
    3phuckracistgop

    What in the Hell???

    Okay I've read reviews and about Kathleen Collins, but some of her directions leave me wondering "What the Hell", like the sleazy way the male student looked at her after the lecture.

    And especially with Duke and the cape when he interrupted her reading in the library, and which I found farfetched, forced and unrealistic.

    Plus it's summer time and who in the Hell wears a cape, much less during the summer in a glaring bit of bullmarlarky. Oh and what was his reasoning for being in a library in the first place? Plot holes that a cement mixer couldn't fill.

    I'm glad that Kathleen Collins was able to produce this movie and as an African American I will admit that it has it's flaws. But I can't rate it as a bad drama, but it is also not a good drama due to the scripting of this old fart and with a younger woman who wouldn't pay him noind if it wasn't written into this movie. It would have been more believable had she been more age and looks appropriate.

    I'm not even going to finish watching this as it follows the same lame avenues of old white men and women too young to be bothered.

    So it went from a 5-6 to a weak 3.
    6masonfisk

    A BIT OFF THE BEATEN PATH...!

    A dramedy from 1982 by the late filmmaker Kathleen Collins. Spanning a summer where a professor has taken a sabbatical w/her artist husband. He, in turn, is inspired by the lovely women he comes across to sketch which irks his liberal minded frau who in turn agrees to star in one of her student's films where she meets a charismatic actor. Featuring a predominantly African American cast who are not playing pimps, gypsies or thieves, these well rounded people of the art world are an anomaly to what we as film fans have come to expect from these types of projects. Definitely a case of what could of been, this lumpy gem does has its faults (the acting by the lead actress is not very strong) but its sense of place & the people that inhabit it is fascinating. Look for Night of the Living Dead lead, Duane Jones, in probably one of his last performances as the actor who catches the instructor's eye.
    Indie29401

    Terrible

    Don't believe the hype. This film is awful. Poorly executed, boring and filled with clichés. Couldn't make it 1/2 way thru. Don't waste your time.
    9Red-125

    A "lost film" that deserves to be seen

    Losing Ground (1982) is one of the few independent films made in the 1980's by a Black woman director. Kathleen Collins was a brilliant, highly talented professor of film. Unfortunately, she directed only this one commercial film, and tragically, she died when she was just 46 years old.

    The movie itself was largely ignored, and would have been truly lost except for a fortunate event. Collins' daughter found the negatives, and Milestone has remastered the film for theatrical release.

    This movie starts slowly. The protagonist, Sara Rogers (Seret Scott) is giving a college lecture about Existentialism. (Director Collins had a graduate degree in French Literature, so we can assume the lecture content is accurate.) However, the scene is a real clunker. Nothing looks real or accurate or natural. I just sat there waiting for a student to ask, "Will this be on the exam?" Then a student asked, "Will this be on the exam?" My thought was, "Ninety minutes of this is going to be hard to take." Wrong. The film got much better quickly, and continued to get better as it progressed.

    Seret Scott is an excellent actor. She is beautiful in an elegant, sophisticated way, and she looks like someone who could and would teach French philosophy or French literature.

    We learn that she and her husband live in NYC, but they are going to live "Upstate" for the summer. (I believe "Upstate" was Nyack, in Rockland County. It's really a suburb of New York City.) Nyack is portrayed as "where the Puerto Ricans live," and the Puerto Rican population is a major plot element.

    A triangle forms, and then a quadrangle. Sara has intimate conversations with her mother about her husband's infidelities, so we learn that they are nothing new. She, however, meets a very handsome actor.

    This plot twist was surprising and interesting, because it involved making a movie within a movie. One of Sara's students is making a short film whose plot (and music) is the Frankie and Johnny story. The student is young, but he appears to know what he is doing, and the Frankie and Johnny movie, and the Losing Ground movie, start to coalesce.

    The film contains some great dancing, some impressive art, good acting, and an interesting plot. I enjoyed it, and I think it's worth seeing. Yes--it will be useful to scholars of cinema as a historical reference. However, I'm not a scholar of cinema. I enjoyed Losing Ground on its own merits.

    The film was shown at the Dryden Theatre in Rochester's George Eastman House. The Dryden Theatre is the ideal venue for any movie, including this one. It's not clear to me whether the movie will actually be shown in commercial theaters, or even at many film festivals. (The film was shown for a week at Lincoln Center.) However, Losing Ground will work well on DVD. If that's your option, take it. Losing Ground is worth seeking out.

    More like this

    Head Over Heels
    7.0
    Head Over Heels
    Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
    7.9
    Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance
    Drylongso
    6.7
    Drylongso
    Chau tin dik tung wa
    7.5
    Chau tin dik tung wa
    Sambizanga
    7.0
    Sambizanga
    Bluesy Dream
    7.2
    Bluesy Dream
    Daughters of the Dust
    6.6
    Daughters of the Dust
    The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy
    6.3
    The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy
    Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
    7.2
    Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One
    Green Fish
    7.0
    Green Fish
    (Haru)
    7.5
    (Haru)
    Made in Hong Kong
    7.5
    Made in Hong Kong

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The film never received distribution outside of festival screenings in director Kathleen Collins's lifetime. It was only decades after she died, that her daughter, who had inherited the negatives of the film, approached Milestone Films, and asked them to help restore and release the film.
    • Quotes

      Sara Rogers: Don't take your dick out like it's artistic - like it's some goddamn paintbrush!

    • Connections
      Referenced in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: The New Shrek Era (2020)

    Top picks

    Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations
    Sign in

    FAQ18

    • How long is Losing Ground?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • June 1982 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • Spanish
    • Also known as
      • Auf schwankendem Boden
    • Filming locations
      • Haverstraw, New York, USA
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $1,006
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $1,006
      • Oct 9, 2022
    • Gross worldwide
      • $1,006
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 26 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

    Contribute to this page

    Suggest an edit or add missing content
    Original US poster designed by Adrian Rothschild
    Top Gap
    By what name was Losing Ground (1982) officially released in India in English?
    Answer
    • See more gaps
    • Learn more about contributing
    Edit page

    More to explore

    Recently viewed

    Please enable browser cookies to use this feature. Learn more.
    Get the IMDb App
    Sign in for more accessSign in for more access
    Follow IMDb on social
    Get the IMDb App
    For Android and iOS
    Get the IMDb App
    • Help
    • Site Index
    • IMDbPro
    • Box Office Mojo
    • License IMDb Data
    • Press Room
    • Advertising
    • Jobs
    • Conditions of Use
    • Privacy Policy
    • Your Ads Privacy Choices
    IMDb, an Amazon company

    © 1990-2025 by IMDb.com, Inc.