Tell It Like It Is | Peggy Dammond Preacely, Julie Dash

[Shannon Kelley] And now to provide a little context as we embark upon our screening of "Losing Ground" and uh... our inquiry into the contributions of Kathleen Collins, which we celebrate this evening, please help me welcome to the stage Peggy Dammond Preacely. [Audience clapping]. [Peggy Dammond Preacely] So, I'm delighted to be here to share some reflections about my dear friend and my colleague Kathleen Conwell Collins. Before we view what the New York Times uh... editor, uh... Richard Brody, said was her masterpiece- "Losing Ground" At this point in my life journey, in my 70's, I think back on our friendship that I had with Kathy as a highlight of my life. Kathy was my friend, my sister, my mentor, my spiritual advisor and a fellow artist. Kathy and I met as teenagers in various civil rights meetings in the early 1960's. She was from Jersey City and I was from Harlem and like so many colored kids in the north in the 1950's and the 60's we were both angered and inspired by the southern movement- protests against segregation and violence. Kathy and I were particularly impressed by the growing student movement which fostered the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee known as SNCC. It was an incredible time to be a teenager particularly for those of us who came from middle-class black families where our parents values insisted that we too were responsible for making the world a better place... doing something for our people. In the Spring of 1962 Kathy and I were recruited to join SNCC and to travel to the Deep South to become SNCC field workers in the cause of black voter registration. Neither of us had ever been south before so when we found ourselves living in the backwoods shack in Lee County, Georgia, we knew we were bearing witness with our very bodies to the fight for freedom and equality. We lived for that summer with an extraordinary woman, who was a true freedom fighter. She was also a sharecropper. Her name was Mamma Dolly Rains (?) and she bravely it out us northern black and white students, so-called "troublemakers", to live with her, to live with her on her farm. By opening her home to SNCC students she put herself and her family at great risk from the Ku Klux Klan and from the racist terrorists that shot into our home at night and burned the churches where we, where we taught voter registration and classes and literacy late at night. Kathy and I were arrested and jailed three different times for voter registration activities or for protest marches. I can vividly recall how Kathy's beautiful, strident voice sang out loud when we were in the jail cells into late at night. And although we were often very, very afraid we gained courage from these black men and women and children who were really brave enough to confront the brutal segregation by attempting to register to vote sometimes walking many miles-many, many times to the courthouse, they risked their lives and some even lost their, their lot...they risked their jobs and sometimes even lost their lives for the right to vote in 60's America. And Kathy and I knew that these rural farmers and sharecroppers they were the real heroes. Our baptism into the Black South that incredible summer... was deep and life-changing for both of us. Kathy and I wrote fervently in our journals regarding the intensity of our experiences, the danger, and the historical significance of what we were doing was not lost on us but would have a lasting effect on the direction that our lives ultimately took and that summer substantially affected our friendship. We had shared not only jail cells and the rural farmhouse of Mamma Dolly but also a newfound determination to make a difference in the world as young black women. In the fall of 1962 Kathy returned to Skidmore College where she had been a student and I continued my education by enrolling at Boston University and over the next 20 years we remained in close touch- amidst our various marriages, children, civil rights activities and our love of writing and filmmaking. We visited each other as often as possible and introduced our various husbands and children to each other, even though I moved to California in 1970, and of course we spent long hours on the phone, writing letters to each other about our lives and the world and our spiritual quest for illumination and understanding. Kathy's trajectory was to graduate from Skidmore College in 1963 and from the Paris Sorbonne University in 1966 with an MA in French Literature and Cinema and although Kathleen always described herself primarily as a writer she was, of course, an accomplished filmmaker and playwright as well as a songwriter. Her uncanny ability to observe and create enabled her to become an instructor extraordinaire at New York City College where she taught film editing and directing for many years. Even as a teenager we knew Kathy was special and unique. Her staunch individualism had emerged that summer down south when we were in SNCC when she stepped boldly into an interracial relationship right there in the Deep South. It is also said that "Kathy's way with words" quote unquote, may even have inspired a young Martin Luther King with his "I Have A Dream" speech by paraphrasing one of Kathy's statements while we were all together in the Albany County jail. Kathy's life would always take her on her own way. As she said in an interview for Black Film Review in 1986, just two years before her death, "In all my", quote, "In all my work, I take you to the explosive moment but that's basically where I leave you" and she is also quoted in that same interview as saying, "If I favor anything, I probably always favor the internal resolution before the external resolution because, for me, the internal resolution is the most potent in the psyche. We can of course see that philosophy reflected in her films and plays- a "daringness" to present conflict and complexity without rendering a neat and tidy resolution. Kathy's genius did not always allow her an easy way to live. I've always admired the depth and daring of my friend, Kathleen, both in life and in her work and I salute her daughter, Nina Collins, for having the tenacity and the vision to resurrect this particular an extraordinary film by my dear friend. Please prepare to enjoy. Thank you. [Audience clapping]. [Shannon Kelly] Julie... [Julie Dash] That was wonderful. [Kelley] It's good to be together again on this stage and uh... discussing another extraordinary movie. The next time we do it may be will be discussed...discussing your extraordinary work again but thank you for making time for Kathleen Collins tonight. [Julie Dash] Absolutely, absolutely. She was a big inspiration to me. [Kelley] Yeah...you know, I knew about your New York roots and some of the beginnings of your story as we had done this prior work together, about how you came to come to Los Angeles in your education and your filmmaking here and so forth, but I had forgotten to take into consideration that you would have been kind of involved in the New York independent filmmaking scene too and known a lot of the people may be involved with this series... and... [Dash] I was just recognizing some more names as the credits were scrolling up that I knew Janice Adams and Cathy Sandler and, and Cheryl Hill who was production manager... but I met Kathleen Collins when I was working for Chamba productions. I was a production assistant in the office and she was editing, I believe, "I Let the Church Say Amen" and she had a young daughter with... [Kelley] Which shows here tomorrow night. [Dash] Yeah... I know...yeah... small world. [Dash chuckles]. So that's when I met her. It was about 1971 or '72 or something like that and uh... [Kelley] Yeah, what was that first impression? I can't even imagine. [Dash] Well here she was, African-American filmmaker who had just, you know, graduated from the Sorbonne in France and... she had editing experience that I didn't have, she had production experience, she was a writer, playwright, a screenplay writer... she was, she ate health foods and I never even heard of health foods at that time. Um... I was an undergraduate student at City College and, and she was very, very friendly and very, very giving and... so it was all...it was...it was kind of like remarkable for me at that time and she would invite me into her editing room and, and show me how she was, you know, constructing scenes that they had shot and I just really had never met anyone like that who was so giving and did not say, "Well, you're just a lowly production assistant. You go to the store for us to buy our lunches... so... you know, I don't have time for you." Uhm...a little background on the uhm... where we were working. It was called Chamba Productions and it was the five Chamba brothers who pretty much owned the organization. It was St. Clair Bourne, Charles Hobson, Stan Lathan, Kent Garrett, and Tony Baton (?). Uhm... they usually didn't speak to me at all. [Dash laughs]. The only one who spoke to me was St. Clair Bourne but the others really didn't acknowledge me but, you know... but when Kathleen Collins came in she did acknowledge me and she, like I said, she would invite me into our editing room and so it was, it was a very good experience. [Kelley] Now that's interesting because it could be a question of just a young person paying her dues or one wonders...how a woman, with everything they...that Kathleen Collins brought to the table, but as a woman filmmaker in this atmosphere kind of, you know, got along with folks and so forth. Was this...was she herself in the same position to be proving anything or...? [Dash] I don't think she had to prove anything. She was very confident. Very knowledgeable. Perhaps more so than...maybe that's why she was so giving and the others who were kind of... just working on it...did not have as much experience or talent as she. Uhm... she was a mother too and so she was, you know, she mothered everyone, you know, who came in and out of the office and that wasn't the only time I got to work with her. She...when she was teaching at City College, after I had graduated, and she would have, like, editing seminars at Ross Gaffney's, that was an editing facility in New York City, and I was working on a film there uhm... as she was and she would come into our editing room and assist us... help us really, because she had more experience with... like I said, with constructing scenes in the pacing and, and that was the first time I heard the word or the phrase you...you build to an apex and after the apex, you know, you cut, you know... So she had uhm... actually more experience with editing and with story than, than my instructors at City College. [Kelley] Now here's a film to about, that... that, you know, was just coming to light- we're seeing, we've seen a premiere this evening of a 33 year old film- kind of an amazing fact... but... about people kind of negotiating the difference between the "Apollonian" side of their lives and the "Dionysian" side of their lives and trying to get out of their head and into their body and and how to be an artist and a passionate artist and it... who else is making films like these and thinking about these things? [Dash] Not many people then and certainly not many people now. I know that... when this came out in '82 I was already in Los Angeles uhm... but I did see it in New York and It just blew me away. It was...it was...it was the film that I had been waiting to see... especially from an African-American... not just woman [unintelligible], other than Charles Burnett's "Killer of Sheep". [Dash laughs]. It was uhm... I...what... I love about this film so much is the... its, it's transformative, the complexities, multi-layered, the dialogue... make...you get these "Aha" moments...and I was listening to the audience, people going "Hmm, hmm"... and then there's the wittiness and there's just... there's just so much to it that we don't get that we're so hungry for and, you know, we realize that or I realize that... you know, as a culture we're...we're...we're famished... for... the cinema of ideas. Uhm... we're famished, we're hungry to be transformed. We... we accept... lowbrow... comedy because it's...it's...it's something. It's like...like, you know, eating cheese doodles or something [Kelley laughs]. [Dash laughs]. you know, but when you see a film like this and then it reminds you... well, it reminds me of why I wanted to become a filmmaker and what...and the things that I wanted to say and how I wanted to express them and in the myriad of ways you can express them uhm... and entertain your audience as well. So this was uhm... this is a remarkable film and just like the film that we saw before it, "Suzanne, Suzanne" with Camille Billops, uhm... that makes you... that makes you think. [Kelley] And what it, what an extraordinary difference between the two. Although they complement one another in terms of the inner life that they show and so forth but the difference in class experience and the kinds of consciousness that come about, you know, for the character and so forth really striking and all coming from that, you know, New York scene. [Dash] This is, this is a real treat and um... I, I... I'm just so happy that it is finally being released and so uh... emerging filmmakers will have the opportunity to to to be nourished by this piece of work as well as know that uhm... that it...there were...it exists, it exists and it's uhm... it's, it's just been in the closet, so to speak. [Kelley] I'm kind of curious if we can, if we can open up a little bit and speak of the the the ambiance of New York in general and the black filmmakers at the time. How many were finding each other and working on each other's work? I know of certain instances just from reading credits as we did tonight [Dash] Hmm, hmm... but there's a lot of really fascinating work going on all over town over this 18 year period. and uhm... did...I wonder if people were thinking of that? They're, "We're in a moment," or "We are a group" and stuff like that? [Dash] Well yeah. There was a lot of collaborative work going on at the time and and there was also... you know, it was the tail end of the Black Arts Movement. So you had the studio museum of Harlem and I see they got credit for, you know, the... participating and there was Bill Gunn, who was also a director. He would he play the husband and he had done "Ganja and Hess" uhm... there was a lot of collaborative work but there wasn't work on this level. Uhm... I think you mentioned earlier that Jessie Maple had completed a film called "Will" and I saw "Will" also but it wasn't... it wasn't the same as this particular piece that she really went off. She wasn't goose-stepping. If you understand what I mean in terms of, you know, African-American film genres. She was...she was pushing. [Kelley] Sure, yeah. [Kelley] And Kathleen Collins herself at this time is... it's interesting. She's such an individual intellect and voice and so forth and yet her name will pop up at various times in this series- to editing other people's work and being involved in the people's work- I wondered the degree to which it was important or useful for her to be part of... to be...to think of herself as part of a community or be supported by a community working in this way? Or was she making a career just as an an independent artist, you know, more in an insular way? [Dash] No, she was very much a part of the filmmaking community in New York City because she was... the location where they shot this was Bill Gunn's home and and Dwayne Johnson was in it. Everyone involved with uhm... with this production, it seems like, they were pretty much like the L.A. Rebellion. It was the same group of people over and over...Ronald Gray who also edited with her who was part of the Black Filmmakers Foundation. I was part of the Black Filmmakers Foundation. Charles was as well. Uhm... so it, it was a collaborative effort and, and you know, there were many arts organizations around that also assisted in, in the...not only the production but in the emotional support of filmmakers back east at this time. [Kelley] Do you remember the kinds of things that were said about the fact that so much important work would be finished and then not shown? That, you know, we're showing several things here as was mentioned that never received a proper release and now we're discussing them as though they were part of a history going on but they're kind of...some of them part of a secret history. [Dash] Mm-hmm uhm... yeah, it was hard to get distributed. They would...they were being distributed but they were being distributed to what's called on a non-theatrical track- the colleges, universities, museums, film festivals and, and such because that's how I got a chance to see it and I know that I saw this film in a theater before so it was being distributed but was it was not a wide in general distribution... that was available to uhm... to certain films, to independent films let's say they're an independent films, yeah. [Kelley] Now, uhm... I wonder in, in the encounters that you had with Collins how much of the time you may have seen her on a set or directing people and sort of to know what her energy was or how she was in the creative process? [Dash] She was very high energy uhm... but I only got a chance to see her in various editing rooms for the most part. Uhm... And I know that she was very close to Phyllis Klotman in the...at Indiana University and Phyllis Klotman was, you know, the Doyen behind the starting the Black Film Archives there and that Kathleen Collins would spend a lot of time with her out there writing and editing and teaching classes as well. But I never really got a chance to hang out with her because I was much younger than she was and certainly not [unintelligible] and I...but I... whenever I was with her in her presence she was...she would... embrace you in a way that was very, you know, she draw you in to her sphere and she was very giving. [Kelley] You know it's, it's interesting how much of the time the lead character in the film and people around her spend talking about her personality and that she's cold or intellectual or she goes to be read by somebody and they give her this feedback she doesn't like so forth. It's very interesting you can't help but think, you know... [Dash] Kathleen wasn't like that at all. She wasn't like that at all. Like that character, Sherida (?) No. [Kelley] No, that's the question that begs. So that's why I was asking. [Dash] No, no. She was...uhm... witty and charming and knowledgeable and chatty and... full of energy and life. [Kelley] But you know it sets up a really interesting problematic, you know, that there's a... there's a kind of a woman's experience or black women's experience now that is highly intellectual and very much, you know, about intellectual problems and, you know, how to get your... your thinking life in line with your lived experience in line with everything else and so forth and let alone, you know, what was being done at movies. But was this on the street as well? Like, I mean, it just speaks to a class experience I guess that is very little depicted in films and as we say, you know, very different from Camille's film. [Dash] Yeah, it's it's... Camille Billops comes...came from a very middle-class family in Los Angeles- middle-class black family. [Kelley] Uh-huh. [Dash] Yes but anyway back to this. Yeah people were talking about things like this on the street but no one was really putting it into a visual language So...that's...no one was brave enough. It's just coming to me, no one was brave enough because everyone I, I, think for the most part people wanted to fit in with the... like I said, it was a tail end of the Black Arts Movement, fit in with uhm... doing a broader social, political thing and and this was, this was the cinema of ideas. [Kelley] The next place it seems to come up in the series that I can think of is in, actually in "Ganja and Hess", Bill Gunn's film. Where...in this kind of vampire situation, vampires get to be metaphors to for different ways of living and treating people. [Dash] Absolutely. [Kelley] ...and making choices. So the two of those minds together in one film is really interesting and the kind of a man that gets set up in Bill Gunn's character but set up by Kathleen Collins that he then performs for her. [Dash] Yeah, it was it was a brave performance by Bill Gunn because he doesn't play your average African-American male on the screen especially during that time. He...he allowed himself to be very exposed and vulnerable and all these things and to be you know, the audience even react, "Like all...do you, did you see his face?" You know most men don't act like that on film. [Kelley] Yeah and very much... [Kelley, Dash and audience laughs]. [Kelley] Uhm... well, there's plenty more I'd like to ask but I also wonder if in the audience we may have any questions about- the film, things we may know about the film, or thoughts that you might have about the film, or about Kathleen herself? [Kelley] Uhm... [Kelley] Oh...I see a hand right here in the middle. And there's microphone we're gonna share between us so everybody can hear the question. Here it comes. [Room noise]. [Audience question 1] Can you hear me? Yeah? I'm just curious as to where exactly was the geography of the whole film? Like the apartment. What part of New York was that I? [Dash] I don't really know where the loft apartment was but with the that was Bill Gunn's house up like in Nyack, New York. It was, yeah, upstate and they were on the campus of City College where the young director was directing them. [Room noise]. [Dash] Yeah. [Room noise]. [Kelley] Another question now? [Room noise]. [Kelley] This New York-L.A. thing...I'm kind of curious about because that the, this fact about Camille Billops I didn't even know. It kind of complicates the idea of there being just two coasts and the coasts are kind of in isolation. [Dash] Yeah as...you know, we were the original, before the hip-hop wars, the New York east...east coast-west coast beef was going on with filmmakers too. Not... it was kind of unspoken but there was attention... [Dash chuckles]. and I kind of didn't really fit in either place because I was born and raised in New York and started out in New York, then I came to Los Angeles and so it was like I was kind of neutral zone person. [Kelley] Did people manage to network? Or was it useful to know, you know, what...what, was somebody... [Dash] That was the only way you could really make a film. is you had to network and you had to work with like-minded people. I mean especially when we were doing chemical uhm... filmmaking with the celluloid film. It's very expensive and the equipment was expensive and you needed help. You...but it wasn't like running around with a 5D camera. You really needed a crew... to... you know...to, to get your voice out there to create your project, so...yes. There were lots of cells of people working together. [Kelley] And you know the premise of the series is that there are brackets formed by...first these, these movements are begun by people like William Greaves uhh, saying a "Black Journal" and these television programs and so forth and getting people kind of busy and, and working consistently making documentary for television and making independent documentary. And then on the other other end... Spike. And that kind of plateau that was hit, you know, when... "She's Gotta Have It" kind of hit the mainstream. [Dash] Spike came out of all of that too- that same William Greaves history, Stan Lathan, "Black Journal", soul uhm... Black Filmmakers Foundation, Ayoka Chenzira and, and Hudlin Brothers and Spike, you know, because he had "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop." Everyone always thinks that "She's Gotta Have It" was his first film. No, it's "Joe's Bed-Stuy" and he had several other films too uhm... even before "Joe's Bed-Stuy" and so... everyone knew everyone and everyone was working together in some kind of way collectively. [Kelley] Now...so... I'm curious whether the "historicizing" of this activity in New York is just beginning right now? Or people thinking in terms of that periodization that.... well the, these are the big plateaus? Or if you happen to remember that, for instance, a particular film got released? Or something happened that represented a big beat in a history? [Dash] "Ganja and Hess," I think, was Bill Gunn's film and that was a major beat. The fact that it was recut so many times and it was taken away from Bill Gunn... there was a big debate over whether it fit into the pantheon of African-American films and was it acceptable? Was it...did people understand it? There was a lot of controversy around it and then after that, then it was, uhm... "Sweetback" Melvin Van Peebles and, and then... Spike, "She's Gotta Have It". He kinda eclipsed everyone kind of jumped and got the distribution and just opened the door. Spike's film actually opened the doors for a lot of other people. [Kelley] I see we got a question right here? [Audience question Two] Julie, in reference to, you know, this "East-West" kind of rivalry... it was funny, when...when...we announced this series Billy Woodbury called me up and he goes... "The counter-attack is happening." [Laugther]. And then he, and then he corrected himself and he said, "Well, I mean that in a good way. It's good that you know...that...that after L.A. Rebellion finally got all put into some kind of context that it's now happening with them the New York Filmmakers [Dash] Yeah, well actually, actually with Daughters of the Dust" it became kind of controversial because my film was the first film by an African-American woman to receive wide and general distribution and some people found a problem with that kind of title being attached to it because "Losing Ground" was made years before and "Will", Jessie Maples film, was made years before but they had not gotten distribution. So you know we... I always have to be clear when people say, "Well, it what was the first film made by an African-American woman," I have to say the film's first film to get distribution and to, you know, play for 36 consecutive weeks in New York City. [Audience clapping]. But it was not the first film ever made by African... [Audience member talking] [Unintelligible] ...right, it was not the first film ever made by an African-American woman because we could go all the way back to 1922. [Kelley] Hmmm.