OUR CATALOG
Tree Shade
A film by Lisa Collins
1998 | 29 minutes | Color/BW | 16mm/DVD | Order No. 00658
SYNOPSIS
PRESS
"Lisa Collins' 'Tree Shade' ... boldly goes where few films dare to venture in her dizzying, genre-crossing, time-hopping trip through the lives of four generations of African American women."
"...features an unforgettable high-camp character called Nefertiti Claus who puts our more familiar childhood myths to shame."
“'Tree Shade', a remarkable debut film by Lisa Collins shot entirely MOS, took the award for best American short...Three and a half years in the making, the completion of 'Tree Shade' is as much a story of triumph over adversity as the film itself...”
"'Tree Shade' is a magical, imaginative trip through a family's past where images of reality and fantasy often become one. Lisa Collin's talent for characterization and storytelling is quite evident and truly a rare delight."
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS
- Sundance Film Festival
- Mill Valley Film Festival
- Avignon/New York Film Festival, Best American Short Film
- New Works Festival, Polo Ralph Lauren AwNew Works Festival, Polo Ralph Lauren Award for Best Film and Filmmaker Magazine's Audience Choice Award
- New York Women's Film Festival
- Newport International Film Festival
- Nantucket Film Festival
- Student Academy Award
- DGA Student Filmmaker Awards, Best African-American Student Filmmaker
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Lisa Collins earned her Master’s 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 work shopped 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. (8/14)