AVAILABLE IN THE USA

At the time of her death from cancer in 1988, Kathleen Collins was just 46 years old, but she was already an internationally renowned playwright, a popular professor (at New York’s City College) and a successful independent filmmaker.

Her first film, The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy is an adaptation of a series of short stories by Henry H. Roth about three young Puerto Rican men whose lives are watched over by their father’s ghost. New York's rural Rockland County is an unlikely setting for the both the urban-born trio and the magic they encounter when they meet Miss Malloy, an elderly widow with a house that needs some loving care. 

The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy is a fresh and exciting discovery—not only is it one of the first films directed by an African-American woman, it is also one of the of the best celebrations of Puerto Rican culture in the Northeast US. And what a complete discovery this film is! The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy was never theatrically released, screened once on PBS and then disappeared. Twenty-five years after her mother’s death, Nina Collins rescued the original negative and created a beautiful new digital master of her mother’s film.