Education
Collins graduated from Skidmore College in 1963 and Paris-Sorbonne University in Paris in 1966 with an Master of Arts in French literature and cinema.
Collins graduated from Skidmore College in 1963 and Paris-Sorbonne University in Paris in 1966 with an Master of Arts in French literature and cinema.
She is considered to have "changed the face and content of the black womanist film" and to be the first black American woman to produce a feature-length film. Influenced by Lorraine Hansberry, she wrote about African-American subjects as human beings rather than solely as subjects of race. Kathleen Collins joined the faculty of City College at the City University of New York and became a professor of film history and screenwriting, where cinematographer Ronald Gray encouraged her to go ahead with a screenplay she had adapted from a Henry Roth short story.
This was followed in 1982 by Losing Ground (starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, and Duane Jones), which she wrote and directed.
Both films were shot in Rockland County, New York, and are currently being distributed by Milestone Films. Themes frequently explored in her work are issues of marital malaise, male dominance and impotence, freedom of expression and intellectual pursuit, and her protagonists are cited as "typically self-reflective women who move from a state of subjugation to empowerment.".