CONTOURS presents LOSING GROUND

CONTOURS is a monthly screening series at Paradise Theatre spotlighting films which thematize the world of visual art: painting, sculpture, sketching, and performance. Each feature is preceded by a short film and an introduction by curator and host Saffron Maeve. Maeve also writes an accompanying column for Screen Slate, which covers art films playing in New York. 

Long overlooked and inaccessible due to the lack of theatrical run upon its release, Kathleen Collins’ Losing Ground is a seminal work of American independent cinema. Seret Scott plays Sara, an intellectually curious yet buttoned down philosophy professor, married to a self-doubting philandering artist, Victor (Bill Gunn). When Victor proposes a summer holiday in upstate New York, the sprawling estate contorts into a backdrop for their differing philosophical landscapes—scholarly order vs. artistic chaos—to come to a head, mapped, tongue in cheek, by Collins.

Metatextual black film histories—including Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead cast as an aging, out of work actor—bring the characters own racial anxieties sharply into focus, serving as a dual avenue of self-realization and eventual catharsis. Deeply in tune with the world of the sensual, through the excesses of academic and artistic processes, Losing Ground shows how each of its characters strive for revelatory, private ecstasies.Text by Iman Bundu.

Preceded by the short film A LIVING SCULPTURE by Diana Chire.

(Courtesy of Kino Lorber)

Thursday, September 19th, 7:30 PM/7 PM Doors

General Admission $15.00 | Student/Senior (with valid ID) $12.50 + HST/eventbrite fees

Door tickets are available for purchase on the day of screening. Refunds can be requested up to 24 hours before the screening. All refunds must be requested and processed through eventbrite.

Looking for pre or post show snack or sip? Check out our amazing options right next door!

Blue Door Wine Shop | Café Paradise