Tribeca All Access® 2008
Lisa Collins earned her Masters in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University Film School, with a B.A. from Yale in American Studies/Photography. Currently, she’s the Sr. Editor/Sr. Segment Producer for Hollywood.com.
She wrote, directed and executive produced two shorts: “Miss Ruby's House,” a mockumentary; and “Tree Shade,” a surreal black comedy that garnered the Gold Medal for Best Alternative Film at the Student Academy Awards, and was invited to festivals including: Sundance, Atlanta, Seattle, Newport, Avignon and Cannes. It headlined PBS’s “Reel New York” series; won several top fest prizes and a DGA award.
She workshopped her script, "The Grass Is Greener" at the Sundance Screenwriters and Filmmakers Labs.
With several projects cooking in development, Lisa’s most recent, “Oscar’s Comeback” is a complex documentary inspired by the Oscar Micheaux Film Festival in Gregory, South Dakota, about an all-white town celebrating its famous native son--early 1900s black film pioneer Oscar Micheaux. Shot over four summers, she’s directed and produced it with co-director/producer Mark Schwartzburt. The doc-in-progress has been awarded grants from the South Dakota Humanities Council and NYSCA.
Coming-of-age in a conflicted, racially diverse Brooklyn and being a first-generation American of Jamaican/Cuban parents serves as a source of endless inspiration, humor and raw material.
Through a unique, “mom-and-pop” style film festival, a small town in south Dakota celebrates its most famous native son, Oscar Micheaux, a pioneering African American filmmaker of the early 1900’s.