March is Women’s History Month

Kathleen Conwell Collins graduated from Skidmore College in 1963 with a BA in Philosophy and Religion. After graduating Skidmore, Kathleen taught high school French in Newton, MA and attended graduate school at Harvard at night. In 1965, she won a John Whitney Hay scholarship, enabling her to pursue her masters in French literature through the Middlebury College program at the Sorbonne in Paris. She took a course at there on the adaptation of literature into film, which ignited her interest in cinema.

In 1966, after getting her degree, she returned to the US and joined NET, the New York City public broadcasting network, working on such programs as American Dream Machine, The Fifty-First State and Black Journal. She trained under John Carter, one of the first black editors to join the union. He thought Kathleen had real talent and he helped her get her union card in an astonishing three years. After NET, she worked as an editor for the BBC, Craven Films, Belafonte Enterprises, Bill Jersey Productions, William Greaves Productions, and the United States Information Agency.

By 1974, she had married and divorced Douglas Collins; had two children, Nina and Emilio; and was working as a professor of film history and screenwriting at the City College of New York. In the following two years she also worked as assistant director for the Broadway musicals “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” (Gilbert Moses directing) and “The Wiz” (Geoffrey Holder) as well as on Lincoln Center’s “Black Picture Show,” which was written and directed by Bill Gunn. 

At the encouragement of one of her City College students, Collins shot her first feature film, The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy with an initial investment of a mere $5,000 from friends.

Sources & for more information: https://kathleencollins.org/

SW